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XA^X MACAULAY'S 
fm m fc ESSAY ON ADDISON 





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OF ENGLISH TEXTS 



GENERAL EDITOR 

HENRY VAN DYKE 



THE GATEWAY SERIES. 
HENRY VAN DYKE, General Editor. 

Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Professor Felix E. 

Schelling, University of Pennsylvania. 
Shakespeare's Julius C/esar. Dr. Hamilton W. Mabie, 

"The Outlook." 
Shakespeare's Macbeth. Professor T. M. Parrott, Prince- 
ton University. 
Milton's Minor Poems. Professor Mary A. Jordan, Smith 

College. 
Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. Professor 

C. T. Winchester, Wesleyan University. 
Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. Professor James A. 

Tufts, Phillips Exeter Academy. 
Burke's Speech on Conciliation. Professor William 

MacDonald, Brown University. 
Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner, Professor George 

E. Woodberry, Columbia University. 
Scott's Ivanhoe. Professor Francis H. Stoddard, New 

York University. 
Scott's Lady of the Lake. Professor R. M. Alden, Leland 

Stanford Jr. University. 
IRVING'S Life of Goldsmith. Professor Martin Wright 

Sampson, University of Indiana. 
Macaulay's Milton. Rev. E. L. Gulick, Lawrenceville 

School. 
Macaulay's Addison. Professor Charles F. McClumpha, 

University of Minnesota. 
Macaulay's Life of Johnson. Professor J. S. Clark, North- 
western University. 
Carlyle's Essay on Burns. Professor Edwin Mims, Trin- 
ity College, North Carolina. 
George Eliot's Silas Marner. Professor W. L. Cross, 

Yale University. 
Tennyson's Princess. Professor Katharine Lee Bates, 

Wellesley College. 
Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette, Lancelot and 

Elaine, and The Passing of Arthur. Henry van 

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GATEWAY SERIES 



ESSAY ON ADDISON 



BY 



THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 



EDITED BY 
CHARLES FLINT McCLUMPHA, Ph.D. (Leipzig) 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY 
OF MINNESOTA 




NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 



fR 



320^ 



\^o^ 



OLi 27 1904 



,«^ s Copyright, 1904, by 

^^. 'AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY. 

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London. 

MACAULAY's ADDISON. 

W. P. I 



PREFACE BY THE GENERAL 
EDITOR 

This series of books aims, first, to give the English 
texts required for entrance to college in a form which 
shall make them clear, interesting, and helpful to those 
who are beginning the study of literature ; and, second, 
to supply the knowledge which the student needs to 
pass the entrance examination. For these two reasons 
it is called The Gateway Series. 

The poems, plays, essays, and stories in these small 
volumes are treated, first of all, as works of literature, 
which were written to be read and enjoyed, not to be 
parsed and scanned and pulled to pieces. A short life 
of the author is given, and a portrait, in order to help 
the student to know the real person who wrote the 
book. The introduction tells w^hat it is about, and 
how it was written, and where the author got the idea, 
and what it means. The notes at the foot of the page 
are simply to give the sense of the hard words so that 
the student can read straight on without turning to a 
dictionary. The other notes, at the end of the book, 
explain difficulties and allusions and fine points. 

5 



6 Preface by the General Editor 

The editors are chosen because of their thorough 
training and special fitness to deal with the books 
committed to them, and because they agree with this 
idea of what a Gateway Series ought to be. They 
express, in each case, their own views of the books 
which they edit. Simplicity, thoroughness, shortness, 
and clearness, — these, we hope, will be the marks of 
the series. 

HENRY VAN DYKE. 



PREFACE 

Believing that this Essay on Addison should be 
placed before the scholar to be read, appreciated, and 
understood, I have sought to make this edition simple, 
attractive, and helpful. I have avoided profuse anno- 
tation. I have given only such information as would 
seem necessary to get a proper understanding of the 
Essay. Merely to accumulate notes and to overload 
the pupil with historical and biographical data, would 
defeat the object of the work. 

In the sketch of Macaulay's life, based on Trevel- 
yan's Life and Letters and other sources, as well as in 
the sketch of Addison's life, largely taken from Court- 
hope's Addison, I have presented the most important 
biographical data, mainly with a view to outline the 
man's real life and character, especially as they bear 
upon his work. 

CHARLES FLINT McCLUMPHA. 

University of Minnesota, 
Minneapolis. 



CONTENTS 



Introduction .... 
I. Private Life of Macaulay 
II. Macaulay's Style . 

III. The Essay on Addison . 

IV. Life and Times of Addison 



Bibliography 
Essay on Addison 
Notes . 



12 

23 
26 
28 

36 

39 
157 



INTRODUCTION 

Macaulay's Essays are a household word. This is true 
also of his History and of his Lays. *' It is said that the 
traveller in Australia, visiting one settler's hut after an- 
other, finds again and again that the settler's third book, 
after the Bible and Shakspeare, is some work by Ma- 
caulay. Nothing can be more natural. The Bible and 
Shakspeare may be said to be imposed upon an Eng- 
lishman as objects of his admiration ; but as soon as the 
common Englishman, desiring culture, begins to choose 
for himself, he chooses Macaulay. Macaulay's view of 
things is, on the whole, the view of them which he feels 
to be his own also ; the persons and causes praised are 
those which he himself is disposed to admire ; the per- 
sons and causes blamed are those with which he himself 
is out of sympathy ; and the rhetoric employed to praise 
or to blame them is animating and excellent. Macaulay 
is thus a great civihzer." These words of Arnold were 
not meant for praise, yet they truly explain why Macaulay 
is popular and why he is profitable to the great multitude. 

The first part of the Introduction contains a brief out- 
line of Macaulay's career, giving enough of the man's 
private life to afford an estimate of his work and of the 

II 



12 Macaulay's Essay on Addison 

purpose and ideals for which he undertook this work. 
His life was a simple one, almost uneventful, and b^ Hter- 
ary personality was singularly free from all peculiarities 
or complexities. The second part of the Introduction 
will treat of Macaulay's style, and will show some of the 
more important qualities for which his manner of writing 
has been praised, as well as some for which it has been 
criticized adversely. 

The short discussion of the Essay 07i Addison will con- 
nect the work of Macaulay with the subject of his Essay. 
The Notes following the text are brief, but sufficiently 
copious to explain the more difficult parts of the Essay. 

I. Private Life of Macaulay 

Thomas Babington Macaulay was born at Rothley 
Temple, Leicestershire, England, on October 25, 1800. 
His father, Zachary Macaulay, was the son of a Presbyterian 
minister descended from a long line of Scotch Presbyte- 
rians, and his mother, Selina Mills, came of good Quaker 
stock. Zachary Macaulay had made a moderate fortune 
in the West Indies, where he had seen the evils of slav- 
ery, and upon his return to England he became a sup- 
porter of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery and 
edited the newspaper of the Abolitionists. 

" Never," says Minto in his description of Macaulay's 
early environment, " to use his own favourite mode of 
expression, was a child brought into this world under 
circumstances more favourable to the development of 



Introduction 13 

literary talent. His parents belonged to a small sect of 
earnest and accomplished persons, closely knit together by 
a common object, and zealously devoted to their adopted 
mission. With the earUest dawn of intelligence he heard 
imperial policy discussed at his father's table, and the 
affairs of the nation arranged, not by ideal politicians, but 
by men actively engaged in public business — such men as 
Henry Thornton, Thomas Babington, and Wilberforce. 
He saw his father preparing their printed organ, and at an 
early age was taught by that encyclopedic statistician the 
argumentative value of facts," 

Thomas, the eldest son of the family, showed a pre- 
cocity that was simply extraordinary from his very in- 
fancy. His mother noted his remarkable memory and 
had confident belief that he was a genius. When a mere 
child he was an insatiable reader, was busied with his 
pen writing histories, epics, odes, and what not, with 
great ease and correctness. In 1808 his mother writes : 

" He took it into his head to write a compendium of 
universal history about a year ago, and he really contrived 
to give a tolerably connected view of the leading events 
from the Creation to the present time, filling about a 
quire of paper. . . . He was so fired with reading 
Scott's Lay and Marmion, the former of which he got 
entirely, and the latter almost entirely, by heart, merely 
from his delight in reading them, that he determined on 
writing himself a poem in six cantos, which he called 
The Battle of Cheviot:' 

At this time of his life and education it is interesting 



14 Macaulay*s Essay on Addison 

to read of the loving care and judicious encouragement 
bestowed upon her son by Mrs. Macaulay. She kept a 
high standard before him in his attempts at composition. 
Here are a few words of loving criticism : 

" I know you write with great ease to yourself, and 
would rather write ten poems than prune one ; but 
remember that excellence is not attained at first. All your 
pieces are much mended after a little reflection, and there- 
fore take some solitary walks, and think over each separate 
thing. Spare no time or trouble to render each piece as 
perfect as you can, and then leave the event without one 
anxious thought." 

This she wrote him before he was thirteen years old. 
Her sympathetic aid and counsel saved him from much 
of that conceit and literary vanity to which his wonderful 
precocity and briUiancy of mind exposed him. She lived 
long enough to see him achieve the honour and fame for 
which her instruction had prepared him. She died 
almost immediately after his first great speech on the 
Reform Bill in 1831. 

In 181 2 Macaulay left his happy home, his three 
brothers and five sisters, to attend a private school in the 
neighbourhood of Cambridge. His letters from the school 
at Shelford show that he was a very homesick boy, and 
yet he seems to have the same insatiable thirst for litera- 
ture. " The books which I am at present employed in 
reading to myself are, in English, Plutarch's Lives, and 
Milner's Ecclesiastical History; in French, F^nelon's 
Dialogues of the Dead'' And from Aspenden Hall, in 



Introduction 15 

1815, he writes : '' Hear what I have read since I came 
here. Hear and wonder ! I have in the first place read 
Boccaccio's Decameron, a tale of a hundred cantos. . . . 
I have likewise read Gil Bias, with unbounded admira- 
tion of the abilities of Le Sage. Maiden and I have read 
Thalaba together, and are proceeding to the Curse of 
Kehama. ... I have read the greater part of the His- 
tory of Ja77ies I and Mrs. Montagu's essay on Shakspere, 
and a great deal of Gibbon. I never devoured so many 
books in a fortnight." 

In 181 8 Macaulay entered Trinity College, Cambridge. 
He enjoyed the social hfe of the place, formed pleasing 
friendships, and won distinction in all his collegiate 
studies except the one for which Cambridge is most 
famous, mathematics. His fondness for Hterature made 
the mathematical training the more distasteful. After 
winning the prize for Latin declamation and twice secur- 
ing the Chancellor's medal for English verse, he won the 
Craven scholarship in 1821, received his B.A. degree in 
1822, and became a Fellow in 1824. He remained in 
college residence for more than seven years. Taken as a 
whole, his career at the University was very satisfactory. 
His acknowledged conversational powers and his genial 
manners gave him a prominent place in all its affairs. 
Becoming a leader in the Union Debating Society, he 
developed a taste for poHtics second only to that for lit- 
erature. He also found his equals in such men as the 
Coleridges, Hyde, Villiers, Praed, and Charles Austin. 

After leaving the University he studied law and was 



1 6 Macaulay's Essay on Addison 

admitted to the bar in 1826. The law, however, did not 
interest him. He had already in 1822 begun to make a 
name for himself in literature, his first contributions of 
importance being made to Knight's Quarterly Magazine. 
These secured for him an introduction to Jeffrey, editor 
of the Edinbu7'gh Review, also an invitation to write for 
this famous Review, and in the August number of 1825 
appeared his Essay o?i Milton. This article marks 
the beginning of his success and fame. It showed at a 
glance that he was a new force in literature. It deter- 
mined his career. He decided to renounce all thought 
of pursuing the legal profession and to devote himself to 
his literary labours. From this time he contributed regu- 
larly to the Review. 

While at Cambridge Macaulay received the bad news 
of his father's failure in business. Zachary Macaulay had 
neglected his own affairs and had allowed his fortune to 
slip away from him in his devotion to anti-slavery agita- 
tion. Thus at the very outset of his career young 
Macaulay had to come to the aid of his family. " He 
quietly took up the burden," says his nephew and biogra- 
pher. Sir George Trevelyan, " which his father was unable 
to bear ; and, before many years had elapsed, the fortunes 
of all for whose welfare he considered himself responsible 
were abundantly secured. In the course of the efforts 
which he expended on the accomplishment of this result, 
he unlearned the very notion of framing his method of life 
with a view to his own pleasure ; and such was his high 
and simple nature, that it may well be doubted whether 



Introduction 17 

it ever crossed his mind that to Hve wholly for others was 
a sacrifice at all." 

Not only did Macaulay, with the aid of his brother 
Henry, ultimately pay off his father's debts, but during 
this period of gloom he was the " hfe and sunshine " of 
the household. His sister. Lady Trevelyan, says that 
those who did not know him then, before 1826, never 
" knew him in his most briUiant, witty, and fertile vein." 

In 1828 his public life may be said to have begun. 
Lord Lyndhurst made him a Commissioner of Bankruptcy. 
And in 1830, on the nomination of Lord Lansdowne, he 
was elected Whig member of Parliament for Calne. Lord 
Lansdowne had been impressed by his articles on Mill. 
Macaulay entered Parliament, says Trevelyan, "on the 
eve of the most momentous conflict that ever was fought 
out by speech and vote within the walls of a senate house, 
the young recruit went gayly to his post in the ranks of 
that party whose coming fortunes he was prepared loyally 
to follow, and the history of whose past he was destined 
eloquently, and perhaps imperishably, to record." 

Macaulay's first speech on the Reform Bill secured for 
him the same foremost place among orators that his 
article on Milton had secured for him among essayists. 
" Whenever he rose to speak," relates Gladstone who sat 
with him in Parliament, " it was a summons like a trum- 
pet-call to fill the benches." Strenuous was the Hfe that 
Macaulay led at this time. In society he was one of the 
Uons ; in literary circles he associated with Rogers, Moore, 
Campbell, and others ; in political affairs he filled impor- 

ESSAY ON ADDISON — 2 



1 8 Macaulay's Essay on Addison 

tant offices ; and in connexion with the Edinburgh 
Review he wrote thirteen articles — from the Essay on 
Robert Montgomery to the first Essay on Lord Chathain, 
During these four years he was the main support of his 
family. In 1832 he was appointed one of the Commis- 
sioners of the Board of Control. In this same year, as an 
acknowledgment of his part in reform, he was returned to 
Parhament by the newly enfranchised borough of Leeds. 
" In the first session of the Reformed Parliament he spoke 
against the repeal of the union with Ireland, in favour of a 
bill for removing the civil disabilities of the Jews, and in 
favour of a bill for depriving the East India Company of 
their exclusive trade with China and other commercial 
privileges." 

In 1833 ^^^ was appointed a member of the Supreme 
Council of India, and its legal adviser, at a salary of ten 
thousand pounds a year. This was an important post, 
one that would supply him with a modest fortune suffi- 
cient for his own simple tastes, and for the welfare of his 
brothers and sisters. Concerning it he wrote to his 
sister : " I may therefore hope to return to England at 
only thirty-nine, in the full vigour of hfe, with a fortune 
of thirty thousand pounds. A larger fortune I never de- 
sired." 

His labours in India were arduous, and he won the 
same reputation as an Indian statesman that he had 
already achieved in politics at home. He set himself at 
work solving the great problems presented in India. 
Such problems were the formation of a new Penal Code, 



Introduction 19 

the Code of Criminal Procedure, and the task of provid- 
ing public instruction for the native population of India. 
During this time he found little time for writing, but his 
reading list shows that he was the same omnivorous de- 
vourer of books as he had been in his English home. 
He left India at the end of the year 1837, and arrived 
in England in the middle of the year 1838. 

Upon his return home his great desire was to retire to 
private hfe and devote himself to that Histoi-y of England 
which he had planned to make the grand work of his 
last years. He resumed his Essays in the Edinburgh 
Review, that on Sir WiUiam Temple being one of his 
best. In October he left England again to spend the 
winter of 1838-39 in visiting the more important Italian 
cities. He was greatly moved by the sights, historical 
monuments, and architecture of ancient and mediaeval 
Italy. The visit to the church of Santa Croce " was to 
me," he records in his journal, " what a first visit to West- 
minster Abbey would be to an American." Soon after his 
return to England he was hurried again into politics and 
was elected to Parliament as member for Edinburgh, and 
shortly after this he entered the Cabinet as Secretary at 
War, in the ministry of Lord Melbourne. By this time 
he had already begun his great task, the " history of Eng- 
land from the accession of King James II down to the 
time which is within the memory of men still living." 

The Tory party came into power in 1841, and Macau- 
lay was reheved from his burdensome duties as Secretary, 
though he still retained his seat in the House. This 



20 Macaulay's Essay on Addison 

relief from official duties gave him time to pursue his 
literary projects. He resumed his frequent contributions 
to the Edinburgh Revieiu, among which was his Essay 
on Addison, in 1843. In this same year, 1843, he pre- 
pared the first collected edition of his Essays. In 1844 
his connexion with the Review ceased. Two years be- 
fore this, 1842, Macaulay allowed the publication of a 
series of poems upon which he had been at work for 
several years. These were his Lays of Ancient Rome. He 
himself was not without misgivings as to their success. 
But the Lays at once became popular and had an enor- 
mous sale. It is recorded that " eighteen thousand of the 
Lays of Ancient Rome were sold in ten years ; forty thou- 
sand in twenty years; and, by June, 1875, upward of a 
hundred thousand copies had passed into the hands of 
readers." 

The Whigs came into power again in 1846, and Macau- 
lay, at the request of Lord John Russell, again became a 
member of the Cabinet, Paymaster- General of the Army. 
In 1846 he was re-elected by his Scotch constituents only 
after a severe struggle. In the following year, however, 
at the time of the general election the opposition forces 
were too strong for him, and he was defeated. The 
Scotch voters deserted him because of his independent 
stand on religious and other questions. This defeat 
marks the real end of his pohtical life and the beginning 
of his great historical labour, the History of Englafid. 
His defeat was a loss for politics, but a gain for Hterature. 
He was now able to devote his whole time to the History, 



Introduction 21 

and for the next few years he worked " doggedly " at it. 
In 1848 appeared the first two volumes. They met with 
astonishing success. " Not since the publication of the 
first volume of the * Decline and Fall,' " writes Morison, 
'' nearly three quarters of a century before, has any his- 
torical work been received with such universal acclama- 
tion. The first edition of three thousand copies was 
exhausted in ten days ; and in less than four months 
thirteen thousand copies were sold." In the same year 
the honour of election to the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow 
University was bestowed upon the historian. 

Up to this time Macaulay's energy had been super- 
abundant and his duties manifold and fatiguing, yet his 
health had been almost always good if not robust. In 
the middle of the year 1852 he was suddenly stricken 
down by heart disease, which was followed by a con- 
firmed asthma. His forty years of incessant intellectual 
labours had finally undermined his health. Now the peo- 
ple of Edinburgh, having repented his defeat, re-elected 
him to Parliament without any canvass on his own behalf. 
This triumph was very flattering to Macaulay, but he 
never took up political life as in former years. He made 
only three speeches during his last four years in the 
House, and all these in 1853. He could no longer en- 
dure the fatigues that were formerly a pleasure to him. 
Warned by his failing health that he must set a limit to 
his activities, he resigned his seat in 1856. 

The third and fourth volumes of his History were 
published in 1855. "^^^ public interest in these volumes 



22 Macaulay's Essay on Addison 

was fully as great as in the first two, twenty-five thousand 
copies being sold in a few months. Continuing his work 
upon his History, he also found time to contribute to the 
Encyclopedia Britaniiica a series of biographies of emi- 
nent men, namely, Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith, John- 
son, and Pitt. 

In recognition of his services to the state and of the 
glory he had added to Enghsh Letters, he was created a 
Peer, — Baron Macaulay of Rothley, his birthplace, in 1857. 
He still continued to labour on his great task, the com- 
pletion of the History. He realized that his time was 
short, and he regretted leaving his work unfinished. He 
was very brave, and he clung to life and work even at the 
very end : " To-day I wrote a pretty fair quantity of his- 
tory. I should be glad to finish WilHam before I go. 
But this is like the old excuses that were made to Cha- 
ron." Shortly before his death he wrote of himself: 
"Well, I have had a happy Hfe. I do not know that 
any one whom I have seen close has had a happier. 
Some things I regret ; but who is better off ? " 

He died December 28, 1859, at Holly Lodge, a villa 
in Kensington. 

"On the 9th of January, i860, with impressive pomp, 
and amid the grief of an entire nation, he was borne to 
Westminster Abbey and buried in the Poets' Corner at 
the feet of the statue of Addison, and near the tombs of 
Johnson and Goldsmith, Garrick, Handel, and Gay." 



Introduction 23 

II. Macaulay's Style 

As distinctly as any writer of the nineteenth century, 
Macaulay demonstrates the truth of the old saying, " The 
style is the man." The characteristic quahties of Macau- 
lay's personality were simplicity, positiveness, and force- 
fulness. The master qualities of his style are clearness, 
directness, and energy. 

The extraordinary powers of memory, the energy of 
intellect, the vividness and intensity of thought and feel- 
ing, and the high development of analogical faculty 
combined to give Macaulay his brilliant command over 
expression and literary art. He had the true genius for 
narration. 

The elements of his style may be examined more 
closely. His vocabulary was copious. It was far from 
technical, not commonplace, not scholastic. It was not 
a remarkable kind of language, such as may be found in 
Carlyle's works. Minto says : " His command of ex- 
pression was proportioned to the extraordinary compass 
of his memory. The copiousness appears not so much 
in the Shakspearian form of accumulating synonyms one 
upon another, as in a profuse way of repeating a thought 
in several different sentences." 

Macaulay said of Johnson, " When he wrote for pub- 
lication, he did his sentences out of English into John- 
sonese." The same can by no means be said of Macaulay ; 
but critics pretty generally agree that he used too many 
artifices of style, such as balanced sentences, abrupt tran- 



24 Macaulay's Essay on Addison 

sitions, and pointed figures of speech. His is a style that 
can be imitated easily. His systematic use of the short 
sentence is said to come from his study of Gibbon. The 
length of his commonest sentence is about equal to the 
usual spoken sentence. His more elaborate sentences 
are those containing words and clauses formally balanced. 
These balanced sentences, generally combined with a 
vast amount of antithesis, produce an artificial effect, 
losing the natural flow and becoming hard and metallic. 
Here it is that he is most open to adverse criticism. In 
John Morley's famous essay on Macaulay this artificial 
manner is severely criticized : " To borrow the figure of 
an old writer, Macaulay's prose is not hke a flowing vest- 
ment to his thought, but like a suit of armour. It is 
often splendid and glittering, and the movement of the 
opening pages of his History is superb in its dignity. 
But that movement is exceptional. As a rule there is the 
hardness, if there is also often the sheen, of highly- 
wrought metal. Or, to change our figure, his pages are 
composed as a handsome edifice is reared, not as a fine 
statue or a frieze, Svith bossy sculptures graven,' grows 
up in the imaginative mind of the statuary. There is no 
liquid continuity, such as indicates a writer possessed by 
his subject and not merely possessing it. The periods are 
marshalled in due order of procession, bright and high- 
stepping ; they never escape under an impulse of emotion 
into the full current of a brimming stream. What is 
curious is that though Macaulay seems ever to be bran- 
dishing a two-edged gleaming sword, and though he steeps 



Introduction 25 

us in an atmosphere of belligerency, yet we are never 
conscious of inward agitation in him, and perhaps this 
alone would debar him from a place among the greatest 
writers." 

Numerous examples might be chosen to show the 
exact and systematic use he made of the paragraph. 
He opened his paragraph with the general topic to be 
discussed, developed this topic in logical order, and 
finally closed the exposition with a complete summary. 
He had, however, the defect of abruptness, and at times 
destroyed the continuity of his statement by the intro- 
duction of generalities and contrasting sentences. His 
vast storehouse of illustrations, his fund of information, 
and his ability to write as if he were declaiming were 
instrumental in causing this defect. 

It remains to add one word of caution to those who 
wish to study his method of writing. This word may be 
taken from Minto's remarks : " If the student wishes to 
conform his style to the general judgement of critics, 
he must not imitate Macaulay too absolutely ; he must 
endeavour to be more varied in the forms of his sentences, 
to aim less frequently at contrasts, to study more care- 
fully the placing of important words, and, above all, to 
make a more moderate use of abrupt transitions." In 
other words, he may not use Macaulay as Dr. Johnson 
advised his readers to use Addison : " Whoever wishes to 
attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and ele- 
gant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights 
to the volumes of Addison." 



26 Macaulay's Essay on Addison 



III. The Essay on Addison 

It is well known how Macaulay in 1825 "won the ad- 
miration of Jeffrey, and a place on the Edinburgh Review " 
by his remarkable Essay on Milton. And it is even bet- 
ter known what an effect that article had on the reading 
public of the famous Blue afid Yellow, as well as on 
its critical editor. After describing the interest created 
by this essay among the readers of the Review, Trevelyan 
relates : " But the compliment that of all others came 
most nearly home — the only commendation of his hter- 
ary talent which even in the innermost domestic circle he 
was ever known to repeat — was the sentence with which 
Jeffrey acknowledged the receipt of his manuscript, ' The 
more I think, the less I can conceive where you picked 
up that style.' " 

This Essay on Addison falls into what may be termed 
the middle period of Macaulay's contributions to the 
Review. It is one of the eight essays that were written 
upon literary subjects, and exhibited more essentially a 
critical purpose. In criticizing The Life of Addison 
by Miss Aikin, he followed the method used by the Edin- 
burgh Review, namely, a criticism of the book to be re- 
viewed, then an independent discussion of the subject in 
hand. He was greatly disappointed with Miss Aikin's 
book, but he was interested in the task of reviewing it. 
In a letter to Napier he writes : " I mistrust my own 
judgement of what I write so much, that I shall not be at 



Introduction 27 

all surprised if both you and the public think my paper 
on Addison a failure ; but I own that I am partial to it." 

In his independent discussion of the subject in hand 
the essayist presents a biographical sketch of Addison, 
together with an account of his hterary ability and 
achievements. If there is any sense of " failure " on the 
part of the reader of to-day, it may be due to the lack of 
criticism of Addison as a writer. Throughout the essay 
more time and considerably more sympathy are spent in 
reviewing the historical and political environment of 
Addison's life than in depicting the character and merits 
of xA.ddison as a man and essayist. Generally speaking, 
this was one of Macaulay's weak points in criticism. He 
reahzed this himself, and was frank enough to confess it 
when he was asked to write an article on Scott : " I am 
not successful in analysing the effect of works of genius. 
I have written several things on historical, political, and 
moral questions, of which, on the fullest reconsideration, 
I am not ashamed, and by which I should be wilHng to 
be estimated ; but I have never written a page of criticism 
on poetry or the fine arts which I would not burn if I had 
the power." 

There are many reasons why Macaulay should have 
been "partial" toward this essay. It is interesting to 
note how many parallels between the careers of Addison 
and Macaulay may be established. Both men seem to 
have evinced a strong Whig bias in their under-graduate 
years at the University; Addison in his Inaitgtiratio 
Regis Gulielmi, and Macaulay in his essay On the Con- 



28 Macaulay's Essay on Addison 

duct and Character of William the Third. The services 
of both these young Whigs were sought by the in- 
fluential men of this party ; rapid promotions followed 
their valuable services ; places in Parliament were made 
for them ; and finally both became Secretaries in a 
Whig Ministry. It is needless to say that both are cele- 
brated essayists : one holding a place among eighteenth- 
century writers, honoured for his charm, refinement, and 
nobleness of sentiment ; the other a similar place among 
the writers of the nineteenth century, renowned for his 
force, brilliancy, and optimism. It is not to be won- 
dered at, therefore, that Macaulay, writing in the nine- 
teenth century, should have enjoyed the historical and 
political career of his counterpart of the eighteenth 
century. 

IV. Life and Times of Addison 

Joseph Addison was born at Milston, near Amesbury, 
Wilts, on May i, 1672. His father, Lancelot Addison, 
was rector of Milston and afterward Dean of Lichfield. 
Educated at Oxford, but forced to leave the University 
because of his preference for monarchy and episcopacy 
at a time when the University was under Puritan control, 
he became a chaplain and tutor in famihes attached to 
the Royalist cause. After the Restoration he served as 
chaplain to the garrison of Dunkirk, and later of Tangier, 
when he returned to England and was rewarded with the 
living of Milston. Here he married Jane Gulston, sister 
of William Gulston, Bishop of Bristol, by whom he had 



Introduction 



29 



three sons and three daughters, Joseph being the eldest 
child. Lancelot Addison was the author of several theo- 
logical treatises. '' His hterary reputation stood high, 
and it is said that he would have been made a bishop, if 
his old zeal for legitimacy had not prompted him to 
manifest in the convocation of 1689 his hostility to the 
Revolution." Steele, who visited Addison while they 
were schoolmates, says of Addison's father : " His 
method was to make it the only pretension in his 
children to his favour, to be kind to each other. It was 
an unspeakable pleasure to visit or sit at a meal in that 
family." Of Addison's mother nothing of importance is 
recorded. 

After attending school at Amesbury, Salisbury, and the 
Grammar School at Lichfield, Joseph was sent to the 
Charterhouse in London, where was laid the foundation 
of his sound classical training, and where was formed that 
friendship with Steele which was so important to him in 
later years. 

In 1687 Addison was entered at Queen's College, Ox- 
ford. He remained there for two years. The excellence 
of his Latin verses attracted the attention of his instruc- 
tors, and he was rewarded with a scholarship at Magdalen 
College. He obtained his master's degree in 1693, a 
probationary fellowship in 1697, and an actual fellowship 
in the following year. This fellowship he retained till 
1 71 1. "He is said to have shown in the society of 
Magdalen some of the shyness that afterwards distin- 
guished him j he kept late hours, and read chiefly after 



30 Macaulay's Essay on Addison 

dinner. The walk under the well-known elms by the 
Cherwell is still connected with his name. Though he 
probably acted as tutor in the college, the greater part 
of his quiet life at the University was doubtless occupied 
in study." 

While connected with the University his reputation 
for classical learning extended itself to the literary circles 
of London, so that he was known to Dryden, the acknowl- 
edged leader of the world of letters, as well as to certain 
political leaders. His Hterary career may be said to have 
begun in 1693 with his Account of the Greatest English 
Poets, his complimentary verses to Dryden, a translation 
of the fourth book of the Georgics, his Address to King 
William, composed in 1695, and a Latin poem on the 
Peace of Ryswick. The Whigs, the party then in power, 
believed that the author might be of use to them. Charles 
Montagu, Earl of HaHfax, secured a pension of three 
hundred pounds a year for Addison in order that he might 
fit himself for diplomatic employments by foreign travel. 

Addison left England in 1699, not to return until 1703. 
" He looked forward to studying the political institutions 
of foreign countries, to seeing the spots of which he had 
read in his favourite classical authors, and to meeting the 
most famous men of letters on the Continent." He first 
crossed to France where he passed eighteen months 
studying the language and literature, and in December, 
1 700, started for Italy, visiting the most important Italian 
cities. In December, 1701, he crossed the Alps to Ge- 
neva, and proceeded through Switzerland to Vienna, 



Introduction 



31 



where he arrived in the autumn of 1702. He then 
directed his course through the Protestant cities of Ger- 
many, reaching Holland in the spring of 1 703, remaining 
there until his return to England in the autumn of the 
same year. " During his journey he made notes for his 
Remarks on Italy, which he published immediately on 
his return home, and he amused himself, while crossing 
Mont Cenis, with composing his Letter to Lord Halifax, 
which contains, perhaps, the best verse he ever wrote." 

Upon his return to England Addison found himself in 
very adverse circumstances. His father had died while 
he was in Holland ; his chief political patron was in dis- 
credit at Court ; his party, the Whigs, were out of office, 
and his means were so reduced that he was forced to hve 
in a very humble manner. It was not long, however, 
before his marked Hterary abilities gained him new 
friends. He was admitted to the famous Kit Cat Club, 
to which all the great Whigs belonged and of which 
Steele, his old school friend, was also a member. It was 
Marlborough's victory in the battle of Blenheim that was 
destined to mend Addison's ill fortune. It was Godol- 
phin who asked Lord Hahfax to name a poet quahfied 
to celebrate Blenheim and the victory of the Captain - 
General. And the story goes, if Pope is to be trusted, 
that Godolphin's messenger " found Addison lodged up 
three pair of stairs over a small shop. He opened to 
him the subject, and informed him that, in return for the 
service that was expected of him, he was instructed to 
offer him a Commissionership of Appeal in the Excise, as a 



3'^ Macaulay*s Essay on Addison 

pledge of more considerable advancement in the future." 
The fruit of this negotiation was T/ie Campaig7i. 

The Campaign began Addison's active political life in 
1706. The poem was a success. It strengthened the 
position of the Whig ministry ; it secured a post for its 
author. This was followed by promotion to the under- 
secretaryship of state. In 1705 he accompanied Lord 
Halifax to the Court of Hanover, to invest the Elector of 
Hanover with the Order of the Garter. In 1 708, owing to 
the displacement of his chief, the Earl of Sunderland, he 
lost his post as Under-Secretary, but almost immediately 
afterward he was offered a secretaryship under the Earl 
of Wharton, the new Lord-lieutenant of Ireland. He 
was also made keeper of the records in Birmingham 
Tower, DubHn. At this time he was elected a member 
of Parliament and remained a member during the rest of 
his life. Swift, in speaking of his re-election in 1710, 
said, " If he had a mind to be chosen king, he would 
hardly be refused." 

Meanwhile Addison had not abandoned his literary 
work. After aiding Steele in the composition of his 
Tender Husband, which was acted in 1705, he wrote 
the poem called Rosamo?id, which was set to music by the 
composer Thomas Clayton, in the style of the Italian opera 
then in vogue. This piece was performed in 1706, but it 
was poorly received. When Steele began his Tatler, in 
1709, Addison became a frequent contributor to it, the 
first of his contributions being No. 18. The issue of The 
Tatler by Addison and Steele reached 271 numbers, of 



Introduction ^3 

which Steele wrote about i88, Addison only 42, the 
others being the work of their joint labours. Though 
criticism has usually attributed a greater share of praise 
to the fine workmanship and remarkable method of 
Addison's contributions to T/ie Tatlei', yet the originahty 
of Steele, his ability to initiate and invent, his energy and 
emotionaHsm, are factors to be accredited to Steele in a 
comparative study of the work of The Tatler. Truly, 
later, Addison left his impression on every feature of 
essay-writing that was developed into the perfection of 
style in the pages of The Spectator. The Tatler was pub- 
lished till January 2, 1710-11, when it was discontinued 
and its place was taken by The Spectator, the first number 
of which appeared on March i, 1710-11. The Spectator 
was issued every day except Sunday, while The Tatler 
had appeared only three times a week. It was the daily 
essay, together with a number of advertisements and letters 
from real and supposed correspondents, that changed the 
genuine newspaper character of The Tatler into that of 
a literary periodical. The newspaper at once became a 
success, and this was due in a large measure to the 
superior quality of Addison's contributions. In the papers 
upon Sir Roger de Coverley the inventive skill of Steele 
and the literary genius of Addison were exhibited in the 
highest degree of perfection. Addison's contributions to 
The Spectator were 2 74 in number, while Steele's were 236. 
Addison's fame as an essayist rests chiefly upon the articles 
he contributed to these two periodicals. He also wrote 
for The Guardian, the successor of The Spectator, and in 

ESSAY ON ADDISON — 3 



34 Macaulay's Essay on Addison 

June, 1 714, he began, without the aid of Steele, anew series 
of The Spectator, this appearing only three times a week. 
He was also interested in three other periodicals. The Whig 
Examiner, The Freeholder, and The Old Whig. These 
last were political papers. 

About a month after the publication of the first num- 
ber of The Guardian, on April 13, 1713, Addison won 
great contemporary fame by the production of his tragedy, 
Cato, which was partly written some twelve years before. 
This tragedy is said to have been performed amid great 
public enthusiasm, the Whigs and Tories being equally 
excited by the eloquent speeches upon the liberties of 
Rome. Pope in his letter to Trumbull, April 30, 1713, 
relates how the two political parties vied with each other 
in their efforts to praise the drama and to make it a 
"party play " : "The numerous and violent claps of the 
Whig party on the one side of the theatre were echoed 
back by the Tories on the other, while the author sweated 
behind the scenes with concern to find their applause 
proceeding more from the hand than the head. ... I 
believe you have heard that, after all the applauses of the 
opposite faction, my Lord Bolingbroke sent for Booth, 
who played Cato, into the box, between one of the acts, 
and presented him with fifty guineas, in acknowledg- 
ment, as he expressed it, for defending the cause of hb- 
erty so well against a perpetual dictator. The Whigs are 
unwilling to be distanced this way, and therefore design a 
present to the same Cato very speedily." The fame of 
Cato passed from England to the Continent. " It was 



Introduction 35 

twice translated into Italian, twice into French, and once 
into Latin ; a P'rench and a German imitation of it were 
also published." 

Two years later, March, 17 15, a second drama was pro- 
duced by Addison. This was The Dru7ii7ner, a comedy. 
It was performed at the Drury Lane Theatre, which was 
now under the management of Addison's friend, Steele. 
The Drummer was not a success. This was the last of 
Addison's purely literary productions, his later writings 
being altogether poKtical in character. He resigned his 
secretaryship in March, 1718, hoping to spend the remain- 
ing years of his hfe in literary work. He had planned to 
write another tragedy on the death of Socrates and to 
complete his book on the Evidences of Christianity. 
Soon after his retirement from office, however, his health 
began to fail, and he died on June 17, 1719. There 
are two characteristic stories told of the kindliness and 
nobleness of the man whose whole career had been 
marked by its sweetness of temper and gentleness of 
spirit. Even when he was on his death-bed he sent for 
Gay and asked his forgiveness for some injury which had 
long been forgotten ; and again, caUing for the Earl of 
Warwick, his stepson, he said, " See in what peace a 
Christian can die." 

After lying in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, he was 
buried by night in Westminster Abbey. 



36 Macaulay's Essay on Addison 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Macaulay. 

Biographies of Macaulay. 

1 . The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay^ by G. Otto 

Trevelyan. (2 vols.) 

2. Life of Macaulay y by J. Cotter M orison. {English 

Men of Letters Series.) 

3. Lord Macanlay, by C. H. Jones. 

Criticisms on Macaulay's Works. 

1. By W. E. Gladstone. In Quarterly Review, 1876. 

2. By Matthew Arnold. In Mixed Essays, No. 7, A 

French Critic on Milton. 

3. By W. Bagehot. In Literary Studies, Vol. ii. 

4. By Leslie Stephen. In Hours i7i a Libra?y, 

Vol. iii. 

5. By William Minto. In Manual of English Prose 

Literature. 

6. By H. A. Taine. In History of Etighsh Literature, 

Bk. V, Chap. iii. 

7. By John Morley. In Miscellanies, Vol. i. 

Addison. 

Biographies of Addison. 

I. By W. J. Courthope. {English Men of Letters 
Series.) 



Bibliography 37 

Criticisms on Addison's Works. 

1 . By Dr. Johnson. In The Lives of the English Poets. 

2. By W. M. Thackeray. In English Hiwwrists of 

the Eighteenth Century. 

3. ByH.A. Taine. \n History of English Literatu7'e, 

Bk. iii, Chap. iv. 

4. By William Minto. In Manual of English Prose 

Literature. 

5. By Mrs. Oliphant. In Historical Characters of the 

Reign of Queen A)ine. 

6. By J. Scott Clark. In A Study of English Prose 

Writers. 



ESSAY ON ADDISON 

The Life of Joseph Addison. By Lucy Aikin. 2 vols., 8vo. 
London: 1843. 

Some reviewers are of opinion that a lady who 
dares to publish a book renounces by that act the 
franchises appertaining to her sex, and can claim no 
exemption from the utmost rigour of critical pro- 
cedure. From that opinion we dissent. We admit, 5 
indeed, that in a country which boasts of many female 
writers, eminently qualified by their talents and ac- 
quirements to influence the public mind, it would be 
of most pernicious consequence that inaccurate history 
or unsound philosophy should be suffered to pass un- 10 
censured, merely because the offender chanced to be a 
lady. But we conceive that, on such occasions, a critic 
would do well to imitate the courteous Knight who 
found himself compelled by duty to keep the lists 
against Bradamante. He, we are told, defended sue- 15 
cessfully the cause of which he was the champion ; but, 
before the fight began, exchanged Balisarda for a less 
deadly sword, of which he carefully blunted the point 
and edge. 

Nor are the immunities of sex the only immunities 20 
which Miss Aikin may rightfully plead. Several of 
her works, and especially the very pleasing Memoirs of 

39 



40 Essay on Addison 

the Reign of James the Firsts have fully entitled her to 
the privileges enjoyed by good writers. One of those 
privileges we hold to be this, that such writers, when, 
either from the unlucky choice of a subject, or from 
5 the indolence too often produced by success, they 
happen to fail, shall not be subjected to the severe 
discipline which it is sometimes necessary to inflict upon 
dunces and impostors, but shall merely be reminded by 
a gentle touch, like to that with which the Laputan 

10 flapper roused his dreaming lord, that it is high time 
to wake. 

Our readers wall probably infer from what we have 
said that Miss Aikin's book has disappointed us. The 
truth is, that she is not well acquainted with her 

15 subject. No person who is not familiar with the 
political and literary history of England during the 
reigns of William the Third, of Anne, and of George 
the First, can possibly write a good life of Addi- 
son. Now, we mean no reproach to Miss Aikin, 

20 and many will think that we pay her a compliment, 
when we say that her studies have taken a different 
direction. She is better acquainted wdth Shakespeare 
and Raleigh, than with Congreve and Prior ; and is far 
more at home among the ruffs and peaked beards of 

25 Theobald's than among the Steenkirks and flowing 
periwigs which surrounded Queen Anne's tea-table at 
Hampton. She seems to have written about the Eliza- 
bethan age, because she had read much about it ; she 
seems, on the other hand, to have read a little about 



Essay on Addison 41 

the age of Addison, because she had determined to 
write about it. The consequence is that she has had to 
describe men and things without having either a correct 
or a vivid idea of them, and that she has often fallen 
into errors of a very serious kind. The reputation 5 
which Miss Aikin has justly earned stands so high, and 
the charm of Addison's letters is so great, that a second 
edition of this work may probably be required. If so, 
we hope that every paragraph will be revised, and that 
every date and fact about which there can be the 10 
smallest doubt will be carefully verified. 

To Addison ^ himself we are bound by a sentiment 
as much like affection as any sentiment can be, which 
is inspired by one w^ho has been sleeping a hundred 
and twenty years in Westminster Abbey. We trust, 15 
however, that this feeling will not betray us into that 
abject idolatry which we have often had occasion to 
reprehend in others, and which seldom fails to make 
both the idolater and the idol ridiculous. A man of 
genius and virtue is but a man. All his powers cannot 20 
be equally developed ; nor can we expect from him 
perfect self-knowledge. We need not, therefore, hesi- 
tate to admit that Addison has left us some composi- 
tions which do not rise above mediocrity, some heroic 
poems hardly equal to Parnell's, some criticism as 25 
superficial as Dr. Blair's, and a tragedy not very much 
better than Dr. Johnson's. It is praise enough to say 
of a writer that, in a high department of literature, in 
^The essay proper begins here. 



42 Essay on Addison 

which many eminent writers have distinguished them- 
selves, he has had no equal ; and this may with strict 
justice be said of Addison. 

As a man, he may not have deserved the adoration 
5 which he received from those who, bewitched by his 
fascinating society, and indebted for all the comforts 
of life to his generous and delicate friendship, wor- 
shipped him nightly in his favourite temple at Button's. 
But, after full inquiry and impartial reflection, we have 

10 long been convinced that he deserved as much love 
and esteem as can be justly claimed by any of our 
infirm and erring race. Some blemishes may un- 
doubtedly be detected in his character ; but the more 
carefully it is examined, the more will it appear, to use 

15 the phrase of the old anatomists, sound in the noble 
parts, free from all taint of perfidy, of cowardice, of 
cruelty, of ingratitude, of envy. Men may easily be 
named in whom some particular good disposition has 
been more conspicuous than in Addison. But the just 

20 harmony of qualities, the exact temper between the 
stern and the humane virtues, the habitual observ- 
ance of every law, not only of moral rectitude, but 
of moral grace and dignity, distinguish him from all 
men who have been tried by equally strong tempta- 

25 tions, and about whose conduct we possess equally 
full information. 

His father was the Reverend Lancelot Addison, who, 
though eclipsed by his more celebrated son, made 
some figure in the world, and occupies with credit two 



Essay on Addison 43 

folio pages in the Biog7-aphia Britannica. Lancelot 
was sent up, as a poor scholar, from Westmoreland to 
Queen's College, Oxford, in the time of the Common- 
wealth ; made some progress in learning ; became, like 
most of his fellow students, a violent Royalist ; lam- 5 
pooned the heads of the University, and was forced to 
ask pardon on his bended knees. When he had left 
college, he earned a humble subsistence by reading the 
liturgy of the fallen church to the families of those 
sturdy squires whose manor houses were scattered over 10 
the Wild of Sussex. After the Restoration, his loyalty 
was rewarded with the post of chaplain to the garrison 
of Dunkirk. When Dunkirk was sold to France, he 
lost his employment. But Tangier had been ceded by 
Portugal to England as part of the marriage portion of 15 
the Infanta Catharine ; and to Tangier Lancelot Addi- 
son was sent. A more miserable situation can hardly 
be conceived. It was difficult to say whether the un- 
fortunate settlers were more tormented by the heats or 
by the rains, by the soldiers within the wall or by the 20 
Moors without it. One advantage the chaplain had. 
He enjoyed an excellent opportunity of studying the 
history and manners of Jews and Mahometans ; and of 
this opportunity he appears to have made excellent use. 
On his return to England, after some years of banish- 25 
ment, he published an interesting volume on the Polity 
and Religion of Barbary, and another on the Hebrew 
Customs and the State of Rabbinical Learning. He 
rose to eminence in his profession, and became one of 



44 Essay on Addison 

the royal chaplains, a Doctor of Divinity, Archdeacon 
of Salisbury, and Dean of Lichfield. It is said that he 
would have been made a bishop after the Revolution if he 
had not given offence to the government by strenuously 
5 opposing, in the Convocation of 1689, the liberal poHcy 
of William and Tillotson. 

In 1672, not long after Dr. Addison's return from 
Tangier, his son Joseph was born. Of Joseph's child- 
hood we know little. He learned his rudiments at 

10 schools in his father's neighbourhood, and was then 
sent to the Charter House.^ The anecdotes which are 
popularly related about his boyish tricks do not har- 
monize very well with what we know of his riper years. 
There remains a tradition that he was the ringleader in 

15 a barring out, and another tradition that he ran away 
from school and hid himself in a wood, where he fed on 
berries and slept in a hollow tree, till after a long 
search he was discovered and brought home. If these 
stories be true, it would be curious to know by what 

20 moral discipline so mutinous and enterprising a lad was 
transformed into the gentlest and most modest of men. 
We have abundant proof that, whatever Joseph's 
pranks may have been, he pursued his studies vigor- 
ously and successfully. At fifteen he was not only fit 

25 for the University, but carried thither a classical taste 
and a stock of learning which would have done honour 
to a Master of Arts. He was entered at Queen's Col- 

1 See Hare's Walks in London and Carthusians in Encyclopedia 
Britannica. 



Essay on Addison 45 

lege, Oxford ; but he had not been many months there 
when some of his Latin verses fell by accident into the 
hands of Dr. Lancaster, Dean of Magdalen College. 
The young scholar's diction and versification were 
already such as veteran professors might envy. Dr. 5 
Lancaster was desirous to serve a boy of such promise ; 
nor was an opportunity long wanting. The Revolution 
had just taken place ; and nowhere had it been hailed 
with more delight than at Magdalen College. That 
great and opulent corporation had been treated by 10 
James and by his Chancellor with an insolence and in- 
justice which, even in such a prince and in such a min- 
ister, may justly excite amazement, and which had done 
more than even the prosecution of the Bishops to 
alienate the Church of England from the throne. A 15 
president, duly elected, had been violently expelled 
from his dwelling: a Papist had been set over the 
society by a royal mandate : the Fellows, who, in con- 
formity with their oaths, had refused to submit to this 
usurper, had been driven forth from their quiet cloisters 20 
and gardens, to die of want or to live on charity. But 
the day of redress and retribution speedily came. The 
intruders were ejected : the venerable House was again 
inhabited by its old inmates ; learning flourished under 
the rule of the wise and virtuous Hough ; and with 25 
learning was united a mild and liberal spirit too often 
wanting in the princely colleges of Oxford. In conse- 
quence of the troubles through which the society had 
passed, there had been no valid election of new mem- 



4-6 Essay on Addison 

bers during the year 1688. In 1689, therefore, there 
was twice the ordinary number of vacancies ; and thus 
Dr. Lancaster found it easy to procure for his young 
friend admittance to the advantages of a foundation 
5 then generally esteemed the wealthiest in Europe. 

At Magdalen Addison resided during ten years. 
He was, at first, one of those scholars who are called 
Demies, but was subsequently elected a Fellow. His 
college is still proud of his name ; his portrait still 

10 hangs in the hall ; and strangers are still told that his 
favourite walk was under the elms which fringe the 
meadow on the banks of the Cherwell. It is said, and 
is highly probable, that he was distinguished among his 
fellow students by the delicacy of his feelings, by the 

15 shyness of his manners, and by the assiduity with which 
he often prolonged his studies far into the night. It is 
certain that his reputation for ability and learning stood 
high. Many years later the ancient doctors of Magda- 
len continued to talk in their common room of his 

20 boyish compositions, and expressed their sorrow that 

no copy of exercises so remarkable had been preserved. 

It is proper, however, to remark that Miss Aikin has 

committed the error, very pardonable in a lady, of 

overrating Addison's classical attainments. In one 

25 department of learning, indeed, his proficiency was 
such as it is hardly possible to overrate. His knowl- 
edge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus 
down to Claudian and Prudentius, was singularly exact 
and profound. He understood them thoroughly, en- 



Essay on Addison 47 

tered into their spirit, and had the finest and most dis- 
criminating perception of all their peculiarities of style 
and melody ; nay, he copied their manner with admir- 
able skill, and surpassed, we think, all their British imi- 
tators who had preceded him, Buchanan and Milton 5 
alone excepted. This is high praise ; and beyond this 
we cannot with justice go. It is clear that Addison's 
serious attention, during his residence at the University, 
was almost entirely concentrated on Latin poetry, and 
that, if he did not w^holly neglect other provinces of an- 10 
cient literature, he vouchsafed to them only a cursory 
glance. He does not appear to have attained more 
than an ordinary acquaintance with the political and 
moral writers of Rome ; nor was his own Latin prose 
by any means equal to his Latin verse. His knowledge 15 
of Greek, though doubtless such as was in his time 
thought respectable at Oxford, was evidently less than 
that which many lads now carry away every year from 
Eton and Rugby. A minute examination of his works, 
if we had time to make such an examination, would fully 20 
bear out these remarks. We will briefly advert to a 
few of the facts on which our judgement is grounded. 

Great praise is due to the Notes which Addison ap- 
pended to his version of the second and third books of 
the Meta^norphoses. Yet those notes, while they show 25 
him to have been, in his own domain, an accomplished 
scholar, show also how confined that domain was. 
They are rich in apposite references to Virgil, Statins, 
and Claudian ; but they contain not a single illustration 



48 Essay on Addison 

drawn from the Greek poets. Now, if in the whole 
compass of Latin Hterature there be a passage which 
stands in need of illustration, drawn from the Greek 
poets, it is the story of Pentheus in the third book of 
5 the Metamorphoses. Ovid was indebted for that story 
to Euripides and Theocritus, both of whom he has some- 
times followed minutely. But neither to Euripides nor to 
Theocritus does Addison make the faintest allusion ; and 
we, therefore, believe that we do not wrong him by sup- 

10 posing that he had little or no knowledge of their works. 

His travels in Italy, again, abound with classical 

quotations, happily introduced ; but scarcely one of those 

quotations is in prose. He draws more illustrations from 

Ausonius and Manilius than from Cicero. Even his no- 

15 tions of the political and military affairs of the Romans 
seem to be derived from poets and poetasters. Spots ^ 
made memorable by events which have changed the desti- 
nies of the world, and which have been worthily recorded 
by great historians, bring to his mind only scraps of 

20 some ancient versifier. In the gorge of the Apennines 
he naturally remembers the hardships which Hannibal's 
army endured, and proceeds to cite, not the authentic 
narrative of Polybius, not the picturesque narrative of 
Livy, but the languid hexameters of Silius Italicus. On 

25 the banks of the Rubicon he never thinks of Plutarch's 

lively description, or of the stern conciseness of the 

Co7?tmentaries, or of those letters to Atticus which so 

forcibly express the alternations of hope and fear in a 

^ See Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. 



Essay on Addison 49 

sensitive mind at a great crisis. His only authority for 
the events of the civil war is Lucan. 

All the best ancient works of art at Rome and 
Florence are Greek. Addison saw them, however, with- 
out recalling one single verse of Pindar, of Callimachus, 5 
or of the Attic dramatists ; but they brought to his 
recollection innumerable passages of Horace, Juvenal, 
Statins, and Ovid. 

The same may be said of the treatise on Medals. In 
that pleasing work we find about three hundred passages 10 
extracted with great judgement from the Roman poets ; 
but we do not recollect a single passage taken from any 
Roman orator or historian ; and we are confident that 
not a line is quoted from any Greek writer. No person, 
who had derived all his information on the subject of 15 
medals from Addison, would suspect that the Greek 
coins were in historical interest equal, and in beauty of 
execution far superior, to those of Rome. 

If it were necessary to find any further proof that 
Addison's classical knowledge was confined within nar-20 
row limits, that proof would be furnished by his Essay 
on the Evidences of Christianity. The Roman poets 
throw little or no light on the literary and historical 
questions which he is under the necessity of examining 
in that essay. He is, therefore, left completely in the 25 
dark ; and it is melancholy to see how helplessly he 
gropes his way from blunder to blunder. He assigns, 
as grounds for his religious belief, stories as absurd as- 
that of the Cock-Lane ghost, and forgeries as rank as 

ESSAY ON ADDISON — \ 



50 Essay on Addison 

Ireland's Vortigern ; puts faith in the He about the 
Thundering Legion ; is convinced that Tiberius moved 
the senate to admit Jesus among the gods, and pro- 
nounces the letter of Agbarus, King of Edessa, to be a 
5 record of great authority. Nor were these errors the 
effects of superstition ; for to superstition Addison was 
by no means prone. The truth is that he was writing 
about what he did not understand. 

Miss Aikin has discovered a letter from which it 

10 appears that, while Addison resided at Oxford, he was 
one of several writers whom the booksellers engaged 
to make an English version of Herodotus ; and she 
infers that he must have been a good Greek scholar. 
We can allow very little weight to this argument, when 

15 we consider that his fellow labourers were to have been 
Boyle and Blackmore. Boyle is remembered chiefly as 
the nominal author of the worst book on Greek history 
and philology that ever was printed ; and this book, bad 
as it is, Boyle was unable to produce without help. Of 

20 Blackmore 's attainments in the ancient tongues, it may 
be sufficient to say that, in his prose, he has confounded 
an aphorism with an apophthegm, and that when, in 
his verse, he treats of classical subjects, his habit is to 
regale his readers with four false quantities to a page. 

25 It is probable that the classical acquirements of Ad- 
dison were of as much service to him as if they had been 
more extensive. The world generally gives its admira- 
tion, not to the man who does what nobody else even 
attempts to do, but to the man who does best what multi- 



Essay on Addison 51 

tudes do well. Bentley was so immeasurably superior to 
all the other scholars of his time that few among them 
could discover his superiority. But the accomplish- 
ment in which Addison excelled his contemporaries 
was then, as it is now, highly valued and assiduously 5 
cultivated at all English seats of learning. Everybody 
who had been at a public school^ had written Latin 
verses ; many had written such verses with tolerable 
success, and were quite able to appreciate, though by 
no means able to rival, the skill with which Addison 10 
imitated Virgil. His lines on the Barometer and the 
Bowling Green were applauded by hundreds, to whom 
the Dissertation on the Epistles of Fhalaris was as 
unintelligible as the hieroglyphics on an obelisk. 

Purity of style, and an easy flow of numbers, are 15 
common to all Addison's Latin poems. Our favourite 
piece is the Battle of the Cranes and Pygniies ; for in 
that piece we discern a gleam of the fancy and humour 
which many years later enlivened thousands of break- 
fast tables. Swift boasted that he was never known to 20 
steal a hint ; and he certainly owed as little to his 
predecessors as any modern writer. Yet we cannot 
help suspecting that he borrowed, perhaps unconsciously, 
one of the happiest touches in his Voyage to Lilliput 
from Addison's verses. Let our readers judge. 25 

" The Emperor," says Gulliver, " is taller by about 
the breadth of my nail than any of his court, which 
alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders." 

1 Eton, Rugby, etc., are called " public schools " in England. 



52 Essay on Addison 

About thirty years before Gulliver's Travels ap- 
peared, Addison wrote these Hnes : 

" Jamque acies inter medias sese arduus infert 
Pygmeadum ductor, qui, majestate verendus, 
5 Incessuque gravis, reliquos supereminet omnes 

Mole gigantea, mediamque exsurgit in ulnam." 

The Latin poems of Addison were greatly and justly 
admired both at Oxford and Cambridge, before his 
name had ever been heard by the wits who thronged 

10 the coffee-houses^ round Drury Lane theatre. In his 
twenty-second year he ventured to appear before the 
public as a writer of English verse. He addressed some 
complimentary lines to Dryden, who, after many tri- 
umphs and many reverses, had at length reached a 

15 secure and lonely eminence among the literary men of 
that age. Dryden appears to have been much gratified 
by the young scholar's praise ; and an interchange of 
civilities and good offices followed. Addison was prob- 
ably introduced by Dryden to Congreve, and was cer- 

20 tainly presented by Congreve to Charles Montagu, who 
was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and leader of 
the Whig party in the House of Commons. 

At this time Addison seemed inclined to devote 
himself to poetry. He published a translation of part 

25 of the fourth Georgic, Lines to King William, and other 
performances of equal value ; that is to say, of no value 
at all. But in those days, the public was in the habit 

1 See Justin McCarthy's History of the Four Georges, Vol. I. 



Essay on Addison ^^ 

of receiving with applause pieces which would now have 
little chance of obtaining the Newdigate prize or the 
Seatonian prize. And the reason is obvious. The 
heroic couplet ^ was then the favourite measure. The 
art of arranging words in that measure, so that the lines 5 
may flow smoothly, that the accents may fall correctly, 
that the rhymes may strike the ear strongly, and that 
there may be a pause at the end of every distich, is an 
art as mechanical as that of mending a kettle or shoeing 
a horse, and may be learned by any human being who 10 
has sense enough to learn anything. But, like other 
mechanical arts, it was gradually improved by means of 
many experiments and many failures. It was reserved 
for Pope^ to discover the trick, to make himself com- 
plete master of it, and to teach it to everybody else. 15 
From the time when his Pastorals appeared, heroic ver- 
sification became matter of rule and compass ; and, 
before long, all artists were on a level. Hundreds of 
dunces who never blundered on one happy thought or 
expression were able to write reams of couplets which, 20 
as far as euphony was concerned, could not be distin- 
guished from those of Pope himself, and which very 
clever writers of the reign of Charles the Second, — 
Rochester, for example, or Marvel, or Oldham, — would 
have contemplated with admiring despair. 25 

Ben Jonson was a great man, Hoole a very small 
man. But Hoole, coming after Pope, had learned how 

1 See Gummere's Handbook of Poetics. 

2 See Pope's Essay on Criticism. 



54 Essay on Addison 

to manufacture decasyllable verses, and poured them 
forth by thousands and tens of thousands, all as well 
turned, as smooth, and as like each other as the blocks 
which have passed through Mr. Brunei's mill in the 
5 dockyard at Portsmouth. Ben's heroic couplets resem- 
ble blocks rudely hewn out by an unpractised hand with 
a blunt hatchet. Take as a specimen his translation of 
a celebrated passage in the yEneid : 

" This child our parent earth, stirr'd up with spite 
10 Of all the gods, brought forth, and, as some write, 

She was last sister of that giant race 
That sought to scale Jove's court, right swift of pace, 
And swifter far of wing, a monster vast 
And dreadful. Look, how many plumes are placed 
15 On her huge corpse, so many waking eyes 

Stick underneath, and, which may stranger rise 
In the report, as many tongues she wears." 

Compare with these jagged, misshapen distichs the 

neat fabric which Hoole's machine produces in unlim- 

20 ited abundance. We take the first lines on which we 

open in his version of Tasso. They are neither better 

nor worse than the rest : 

"O thou, whoe'er thou art, whose steps are led, 
By choice or fate, these lonely shores to tread, 
25 No greater wonders east or west can boast 

Than yon small island on the pleasing coast. 
If e'er thy sight would blissful scenes explore. 
The current pass, and seek the further shore." 

Ever since the time of Pope there has been a glut of 
30 lines of this sort, and we are now as little disposed to 



Essay on Addison ^^ 

admire a man for being able to write them, as for being 
able to write his name. But in the days of William the 
Third such versification was rare ; and a rhymer who had 
any skill in it passed for a great poet, just as in the dark 
ages a person who could write his name passed for a great 5 
clerk. Accordingly, Duke, Stepney, Granville, Walsh, 
and others whose only title to fame was that they said in 
tolerable metre what might have been as well said in 
prose, or what was not worth saying at all, were honoured 
with marks of distinction which ought to be reserved for 10 
genius. With these Addison must have ranked, if he 
had not earned true and lasting glory by performances 
which very little resembled his juvenile poems, 

Dryden was now busied with Virgil, and obtained 
from Addison a critical preface to the Georgics. In re- 15 
turn for this service, and for other services of the same 
kind, the veteran poet, in the postscript to the translation 
of the u^7ieid, complimented his young friend with great 
liberality, and indeed with more liberality than sincerity. 
He affected to be afraid that his own performance 20 
would not sustain a comparison with the version of the 
fourth Georgic, by " the most ingenious Mr. Addison of 
Oxford." " After his bees," added Dryden, " my latter 
swarm is scarcely worth the hiving." 

The time had now arrived when it was necessary for 25 
Addison to choose a calling. Everything seemed to 
point his course towards the clerical profession. His 
habits were regular, his opinions orthodox. His college 
had large ecclesiastical preferment in its gift, and boasts 



^6 Essay on Addison 

that it has given at least one bishop to almost every see 
in England. Dr. Lancelot Addison held an honourable 
place in the church, and had set his heart on seeing his 
son a clergyman. It is clear, from some expressions 
5 in the young man's rhymes, that his intention was to 
take orders. But Charles Montagu interfered. Montagu 
had first brought himself into notice by verses, well 
timed and not contemptibly written, but never, we think, 
rising above mediocrity. Fortunately for himself and 

10 for his country, he early quitted poetry, in which he could 
never have attained a rank as high as that of Dorset or 
Rochester, and turned his mind to official and parlia- 
mentary business. It is written that the ingenious per- 
son who undertook to instruct Rasselas, prince of Abys- 

15 sinia, in the art of flying, ascended an eminence, w^aved 
his wings, sprang into the air, and instantly dropped into 
the lake. But it is added that the wings, which were 
unable to support him through the sky, bore him up 
effectually as soon as he was in the water. This is no 

20 bad type of the fate of Charles Montagu, and of men 
like him. When he attempted to soar into the regions 
of poetical invention, he altogether failed ; but, as soon 
as he had descended from that ethereal elevation into 
a lower and grosser element, his talents instantly raised 

25 him above the mass. He became a distinguished finan- 
cier, debater, courtier, and party leader. He still re- 
tained his fondness for the pursuits of his early days ; 
but he showed that fondness not by wearying the public 
with his own feeble performances, but by discovering 



Essay on Addison 57 

and encouraging literary excellence in others. A crowd 
of wits and poets, who would easily have vanquished 
him as a competitor, revered him as a judge and a pa- 
tron. In his plans for the encouragement of learning, 
he was cordially supported by the ablest and most vir- 5 
tuous of his colleagues, the Lord Chancellor Somers. 
Though both these great statesmen had a sincere love of 
letters, it was not solely from a love of letters that they 
were desirous to enlist youths of high intellectual quali- 
fications in the public service. The Revolution had 10 
altered the whole system of government. Before that 
event the press had been controlled by censors, and the 
parliament had sat only two months in eight years. 
Now the press was free, and had begun to exercise un- 
precedented influence on the public mind. Parliament 15 
met annually and sat long. The chief power in the 
state had passed to the House of Commons. At such 
a conjuncture, it was natural that literary and oratorical 
talents should rise in value. There was danger that 
a government which neglected such talents might be 20 
subverted by them. It was, therefore, a profound and 
enlightened policy which led Montagu and Somers to 
attach such talents to the Whig party, by the strongest 
ties both of interest and of gratitude. 

It is remarkable that, in a neighbouring country, we 25 
have recently^ seen similar effects follow from similar 
causes. The Revolution of July, 1830, established rep- 
resentative government in France. The men of letters 
iThis essay was written in 1843. 



58 Essay on Addison 

instantly rose to the highest importance in the state. 
At the present moment most of the persons whom we 
see at the head both of the Administration and of the 
Opposition, have been professors, historians, journal- 
5 ists, poets. The influence of the hterary class in 
England, during the generation which followed the 
Revolution, was great, but by no means so great as it 
has lately been in France. For, in England, the aris- 
tocracy of intellect had to contend with a powerful 

10 and deeply rooted aristocracy of a very different kind. 
France had no Somersets and Shrewsburies to keep 
down her Addisons and Priors. 

It was in the year 1699, when Addison had just 
completed his twenty-seventh year, that the course of 

15 his life was finally determined. Both the great chiefs 
of the ministry were kindly disposed towards him. In 
political opinions he already was what he continued to 
be through life, a firm, though a moderate Whig. He 
had addressed the most polished and vigorous of his 

20 early EngHsh fines to Somers, and had dedicated 
to Montagu a Latin poem, truly Virgilian, both in style 
and rhythm, on the peace of Ryswick. The wish of the 
young poet's great friends was, it should seem, to em- 
ploy him in the service of the crown abroad. But an 

25 intimate knowledge of the French language was a qualifi- 
cation indispensable to a diplomatist ; and this qualifi- 
cation Addison had not acquired. It was, therefore, 
thought desirable that he should pass some time on the 
continent in preparing himself for official employment. 



Essay on Addison 59 

His own means were not such as would enable him to 
travel ; but a pension of three hundred pounds a year 
was procured for him by the interest of the Lord Chan- 
cellor. It seems to have been apprehended that some 
difficulty might be started by the rulers of Magdalen 5 
College. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer wrote in 
the strongest terms to Hough. The state — such was 
the purport of Montagu's letter — could not, at that 
time, spare to the church such a man as Addison. Too 
many high civil posts were already occupied by adven- 10 
turers, who, destitute of every liberal art and sentiment, 
at once pillaged and disgraced the country which they 
pretended to serve. It had become necessary to recruit 
for the public service from a very different class, from 
that class of which Addison was the representative. 15 
The close of the minister's letter was remarkable. '' I 
am called," he said, " an enemy of the church. But I 
will never do it any other injury than keeping Mr. Addi- 
son out of it." 

This interference was successful ; and, in the summer 20 
of 1699, Addison, made a rich man by his pension, and 
still retaining his fellowship, quitted his beloved Ox- 
ford, and set out on his travels." He crossed from 
Dover to Calais, proceeded to Paris, and was received 
there with great kindness and politeness by a kinsman 25 
of his friend Montagu, Charles Earl of Manchester, 
who had just been appointed Ambassador to the Court 
of France. The Countess, a Whig and a toast, was 
probably as gracious as her lord ; for Addison long 



6o Essay on Addison 

retained an agreeable recollection of the impression 
which she at this time made on him, and, in some 
lively lines written on the glasses of the Kit Cat Club, 
described the envy which her cheeks, glowing with the 
5 genuine bloom of England, had excited among the 
painted beauties of Versailles. 

Louis the Fourteenth was at this time expiating the 
vices of his youth by a devotion which had no root in 
reason, and bore no fruit of charity. The servile liter- 

lo ature of France had changed its character to suit the 
changed character of the prince. No book appeared 
that had not an air of sanctity. Racine, who was just 
dead, had passed the close of his life in writing sacred 
dramas, and Dacier was seeking for the Athanasian 

15 mysteries in Plato. Addison described this state of 
things in a short but lively and graceful letter to Mon- 
tague. Another letter, written about the same time to 
the Lord Chancellor, conveyed the strongest assurances 
of gratitude and attachment. " The only return I can 

20 make to your lordship," said Addison, " will be to apply 
myself entirely to my business." With this view he 
quitted Paris and repaired to Blois, a place where it was 
supposed that the J^'rench language was spoken in its 
highest purity, and where not a single Englishman 

25 could be found. Here he passed some months pleas- 
antly and profitably. Of his way of life at Blois, one of 
his associates, an Abb6 named Philippeaux, gave an 
account to Joseph Spence. If this account is to be 
trusted, Addison studied much, mused much, talked 



Essay on Addison 6i 

little, had fits of absence, and either had no love af- 
fairs, or was too discreet to confide them to the Abbe. 
A man who, even when surromided by fellow country- 
men and fellow students, had always been remarkably 
shy and silent, was not likely to be loquacious in a 5 
foreign tongue, and among foreign companions. But 
it is clear from Addison's letters, some of which were 
long after pubhshed in The Gtiardian^ that, while he 
appeared to be absorbed in his own meditations, he 
was really observing French society with that keen and 10 
sly, yet not ill-natured side glance, which was peculiarly 
his own. 

From Blois he returned to Paris ; and, having now 
mastered the French language, found great pleasure in 
the society of French philosophers and poets. He 15 
gave an account, in a letter to Bishop Hough, of two 
highly interesting conversations, one with Malebranche, 
the other with Boileau. Malebranche expressed great 
partiality for the English, and extolled the genius of 
Newton, but shook his head when Hobbes was men- 20 
tioned, and was indeed so unjust as to call the author 
of the Leviathan a poor silly creature. Addison's 
modesty restrained him from fully relating, in his let- 
ter, the circumstances of his introduction to Boileau. 
Boileau, having survived the friends and rivals of his 25 
youth, old, deaf, and melancholy, lived in retirement, 
seldom went either to Court or to the Academy, and 
was almost inaccessible to strangers. Of the English 
and of English literature he knew nothing. He had 



62 Essay on Addison 

hardly heard the name of Dryden. Some of our coun- 
trymen, in the warmth of their patriotism, have asserted 
that this ignorance must have been affected. We own 
that we see no ground for such a supposition. English 
5 literature was to the French of the age of Louis the 
Fourteenth what German literature was to our own 
grandfathers. Very few, we suspect, of the accom- 
plished men who, sixty or seventy years ago, used to 
dine in Leicester Square with Sir Joshua, or at Streat- 

10 ham with Mrs. Thrale, had the slightest notion that 
Wieland was one of the first wits and poets, and Les- 
sing, beyond all dispute, the first critic in Europe. 
Boileau knew just as little about the Paradise Lost, and 
about Absalom a?td Achitophel ; but he had read Addi- 

15 son's Latin poems, and admired them greatly. They 
had given him, he said, quite a new notion of the state 
of learning and taste among the English. Johnson 
will have it that these praises were insincere. '' Noth- 
ing," says he, " is better known of Boileau than that he 

20 had an injudicious and peevish contempt of modern 
Latin ; and therefore his profession of regard was 
probably the effect of his civility rather than approba- 
tion." Now, nothing is better known of Boileau than 
that he was singularly sparing of compliments. We do 

25 not remember that either friendship or fear ever in- 
duced him to bestow praise on any composition which 
he did not approve. On literary questions, his caustic, 
disdainful, and self-confident spirit rebelled against that 
authority to which everything else in France bowed 



Essay on Addison 6^ 

down. He had the spirit to tell Louis the Fourteenth 
firmly and even rudely, that his majesty knew nothing 
about poetry, and admired verses which were detest- 
able. What was there in Addison's position that could 
induce the satirist, whose stern and fastidious temper 5 
had been the dread of two generations, to turn syco- 
phant for the first and last time ? Nor was Boileau's 
contempt of modern Latin either injudicious or peevish. 
He thought, indeed, that no poem of the first order 
would ever be written in a dead language. And did he 10 
think amiss ? Has not the experience of centuries con- 
firmed his opinion ? Boileau also thought it probable 
that, in the best modern Latin, a writer of the Augustan 
age would have detected ludicrous improprieties. And 
who can think otherwise ? What modern scholar can 15 
honestly declare that he sees the smallest impurity in 
the style of Livy? Yet is it not certain that, in the 
style of Li\y, Pollio, whose taste had been formed on 
the banks of the Tiber, detected the inelegant idiom of 
the Po ? Has any modern scholar understood Latin 20 
better than Frederick the Great understood French? 
Yet is it not notorious that Frederick the Great, after 
reading, speaking, writing French, and nothing but 
French, during more than half a century, after unlearn- 
ing his mother tongue in order to learn French, after 25 
living familiarly during many years with French asso- 
ciates, could not, to the last, compose in French, with- 
out imminent risk of committing some mistake which 
would have moved a smile in the literary circles of 



64 Essay on Addison 

Paris ? Do we believe that Erasmus and Fracastorius 
wrote Latin as well as Dr. Robertson and Sir Walter 
Scott wrote English ? And are there not in the Disse?-- 
tation on India^ the last of Dr. Robertson's works, in 
5 Waverlyy in Marniion^ Scotticisms at which a London 
apprentice would laugh ? But does it follow, because 
we think thus, that we can find nothing to admire in the 
noble alcaics^ of Gray, or in the playful elegiacs^ of 
Vincent Bourne ? Surely not. Nor was Boileau so 

10 ignorant or tasteless as to be incapable of appreciating 
good modern Latin. In the very letter to which John- 
son alludes, Boileau says, " Ne croyez pas pourtant que 
je veuille par la blamer les vers Latins que vous m'avez 
envoy^s d'un de vos illustres academiciens. Je les ai 

15 trouves fort beaux, et dignes de Vida et de Sannazar, 
mais non pas d'Horace et de Virgile." Several poems in 
modern Latin have been praised by Boileau quite as lib- 
erally as it was his habit to praise anything. He says, 
for example, of the Pere Fraguier's epigrams, that Ca- 

20 tullus seems to have come to life again. But the best proof 
that Boileau did not feel the undiscerning contempt for 
modern Latin verses which has been imputed to him, is 
that he wrote and published Latin verses in several 
metres. Indeed, it happens, curiously enough, that the 

25 most severe censure ever pronounced by him on mod- 

1 Verses written in Alcaic strophes. See Tennyson's poem on 
Milton. 

2 A dactylic hexameter line is followed by a dactylic pentameter 
line. 



Essay on Addison 6^ 

ern Latin is conveyed in Latin hexameters. We allude 
to the fragment which begins — 

" Quid numeris iterum me balbutire Latinis, 
Longe Alpes citra natum de patre Sicambro, 
Musa, jubes ? " 5 

For these reasons we feel assured that the praise 
which Boileau bestowed on the Machince Gesticiilantes, 
and the Gerano-PygmcB07nachia, was sincere. He cer- 
tainly opened himself to Addison with a freedom which 
was a sure indication of esteem. Literature was the lo 
chief subject of conversation. The old man talked on 
his favourite theme much and well, — indeed, as his 
young hearer thought, incomparably well. Boileau had 
undoubtedly some of the qualities of a great critic. He 
wanted imagination ; but he had strong sense. His 15 
literary code was formed on narrow principles ; but in 
applying it he showed great judgement and penetration. 
In mere style, abstracted from the ideas of which style 
is the garb, his taste was excellent. He was well 
acquainted with the great Greek writers ; and, though 20 
unable fully to appreciate their creative genius, admired 
the majestic simplicity of their manner, and had learned 
from them to despise bombast and tinsel. It is easy, 
we think, to discover, in The Spectator and The Guar- 
dian^ traces of the influence, in part salutary and in 25 
part pernicious, which the mind of Boileau had on the 
mind of Addison. 

While Addison was at Paris, an event took place 

■ ESSAY ON ADDISON — 5 



66 Essay on Addison 

which made that capital a disagreeable residence for an 
Englishman and a Whig. Charles, second of the name, 
King of Spain, died, and bequeathed his dominions to 
Philip, Duke of Anjou, a younger son of the Dauphin. 
5 The King of France,^ in direct violation of his engage- 
ments, both with Great Britain and with the States 
General, accepted the bequest on behalf of his grandson. 
The House of Bourbon was at the summit of human 
grandeur. England had been outwitted, and found her- 

lo self in a situation at once degrading and perilous. The 
people of France, not presaging the calamities by which 
they were destined to expiate the perfidy of their sover- 
eign, went mad with pride and delight. Every man 
looked as if a great estate had just been left him. " The 

15 French conversation," said Addison, " begins to grow 
insupportable ; that which was before the vainest nation 
in the world is now worse than ever." Sick of the 
arrogant exultation of the Parisians, and probably fore- 
seeing that the peace between France and England 

20 could not be of long duration, he set off for Italy. 

In December, 1700, he embarked at Marseilles. As 
he glided along the Ligurian coast, he was delighted by 
the sight of myrtles and olive trees, which retained their 
verdure under the winter solstice. Soon, however, he 

25 encountered one of the black storms of the Mediter- 
ranean. The captain of the ship gave up all for lost, 
and confessed himself to a capuchin who happened to 
be on board. The English heretic, in the meantime, 
1 Louis the Fourteenth. 



Essay on Addison 67 

fortified himself against the terrors of death with devo- 
tions of a very different kind. How strong an impres- 
sion this perilous voyage made on him appears from the 
ode, " How are thy servants blest, G Lord ! " which was 
long after published in The Spectator} After some days 5 
of discomfort and danger, Addison was glad to land at 
Savona, and to make his way, over mountains where 
no road had yet been hewn out by art, to the city of 
Genoa. 

At Genoa, still ruled by her own Doge, and by the 10 
nobles whose names were inscribed on her Book of Gold, 
Addison made a short stay. He admired the narrow 
streets overhung by long lines of towering palaces, the 
walls rich with frescoes, the gorgeous temple of the An- 
nunciation, and the tapestries whereon were recorded 15 
the long glories of the house of Doria. Thence he 
hastened to Milan, where he contemplated the Gothic 
magnificence of the cathedral with more wonder than 
pleasure. He passed Lake Benacus while a gale was 
blowing, and saw the waves raging as they raged when 20 
Virgil looked upon them. At Venice, then the gayest 
spot in Europe, the traveller spent the Carnival, the 
gayest season of the year, in the midst of masks, dances, 
and serenades. Here he was at once diverted and pro- 
voked by the absurd dramatic pieces which then dis- 25 
graced the Italian stage. To one of those pieces, 
however, he was indebted for a valuable hint. He was 
present when a ridiculous play on the death of Cato 
1 See The Spectator, No. 489. 



68 Essay on Addison 

was performed. Cato, it seems, was in love with a 
daughter of Scipio. The lady had given her heart to 
Caesar. The rejected lover determined to destroy him- 
self. He appeared seated in his library, a dagger in his 
5 hand, a Plutarch and a Tasso before him ; and, in this 
position, he pronounced a soliloquy before he struck the 
blow. We are surprised that so remarkable a circum- 
stance as this should have escaped the notice of all 
Addison's biographers. There cannot, we conceive, be 

10 the smallest doubt that this scene, in spite of its absurd- 
ities and anachronisms, struck the traveller's imagina- 
tion, and suggested to him the thought of bringing Cato 
on the English stage. It is well known that about this 
time he began his tragedy, and that he finished the first 

15 four acts before he returned to England. 

On his way from Venice to Rome, he was drawn 
some miles out of the beaten road by a wish to see the 
smallest independent state in Europe.^ On a rock 
where the snow still lay, though the Italian spring was 

20 now far advanced, was perched the little fortress of San 
Marino. The roads which led to the secluded town 
were so bad that few travellers had ever visited it, and 
none had ever published an account of it. Addison 
could not suppress a good-natured smile at the simple 

25 manners and institutions of this singular community. 

But he observed, with the exultation of a Whig, that the 

rude mountain tract which formed the territory of the 

republic swarmed with an honest, healthy, and contented 

1 See San Marino in the Encydopcedia Bj-itannica. 



Essay on Addison 69 

peasantry, while the rich plain which surrounded the 
metropolis of civil and spiritual tyranny was scarcely 
less desolate than the uncleared wilds of America. 

At Rome Addison remained on his first visit only 
long enough to catch a glimpse of St. Peter's and of the 5 
Pantheon. His haste is the more extraordinary because 
the Holy Week was close at hand. He has given no 
hint v/hich can enable us to pronounce why he chose to 
fly from a spectacle which every year allures from dis- 
tant regions persons of far less taste and sensibiHty than 10 
his. Possibly, travelling, as he did, at the charge of a 
government distinguished by its enmity to the Church 
of Rome, he may have thought that it would be im- 
prudent in him to assist at the most magnificent rite of 
that church. Many eyes would be upon him, and he 15 
might find it difficult to behave in such a manner as to 
give offence neither to his patrons in England, nor to 
those among whom he resided. Whatever his motives 
may have been, he turned his back on the most august 
and affecting ceremony which is known among men, and 20 
posted along the Appian way to Naples. 

Naples was then destitute of what are now, perhaps, 
its chief attractions. The lovely bay and the awful 
mountain were indeed there ; but a farm-house stood on 
the theatre of Herculaneum, and rows of vines grew 25 
over the streets of Pompeii. The temples of Pgestum ^ 
had not indeed been hidden from the eye of man by 
any great convulsion of nature ; but, strange to say, 
1 See J. A. Symonds's Sketches in Italy. 



yo Essay on Addison 

their existence was a secret even to artists and anti- 
quaries. Though situated within a few hours' journey 
of a great capital, where Salvator had not long before 
painted, and where Vico was then lecturing, those noble 

5 remains were as little known to Europe as the ruined 
cities overgrown by the forests of Yucatan. What was 
to be seen at Naples Addison saw. He climbed Vesu- 
vius, explored the tunnel of Posilipo, and wandered 
among the vines and almond trees of Capreae ; but 

lo neither the wonders of nature nor those of art could so 
occupy his attention as to prevent him from noticing, 
though cursorily, the abuses of the government and the 
misery of the people. The great kingdom which had 
just descended to Philip the Fifth, was in a state of 

15 paralytic dotage. Even Castile and Aragon were sunk 
in wretchedness. Yet, compared with the Italian de- 
pendencies of the Spanish crown, Castile and Aragon 
might be called prosperous. It is clear that all the 
observations which Addison made in Italy tended to 

20 confirm him in the political opinions which he had 
adopted at home. To the last he always spoke of for- 
eign travel as the best cure for Jacobitism. In his 
Fi-eeholde7'^ the Tory fox-hunter asks what travelling is 
good for, except to teach a man to jabber French and 

25 to talk against passive obedience. 

From Naples, Addison returned to Rome by sea, 
along the coast which his favourite Virgil had celebrated. 
The felucca passed the headland where the oar and 
trumpet v/ere placed by the Trojan adventurers on the 



Essay on Addison 71 

tomb of Misenus, and anchored at night under the 
shelter of the fabled promontory of Circe. The voy- 
age ended in the Tiber, still overhung with dark verdure, 
and still turbid with yellow sand, as when it met the 
eyes of -^neas. From the ruined port of Ostia, the 5 
stranger hurried to Rome ; and at Rome he remained 
during those hot and sickly months when, even in the 
Augustan age, all who could make their escape fled 
from mad dogs and from streets black with funerals, to 
gather the first figs of the season in the country. It is 10 
probable that, when he, long after, poured forth in verse 
his gratitude to the Providence which had enabled him 
to breathe unhurt in tainted air, he was thinking of the 
August and September which he passed at Rome. 

It was not till the latter end of October that he tore 15 
himself away from the masterpieces of ancient and 
modern art which are collected in the city so long the 
mistress of the world. He then journeyed northward, 
passed through Siena, and for a moment forgot his 
prejudices in favour of classic architecture as he looked 20 
on the magnificent cathedral.^ At Florence he spent 
some days with the Duke of Shrewsbury, who, cloyed 
with the pleasures of ambition, and impatient of its pains, 
fearing both parties and loving neither, had determined 
to hide in an Italian retreat talents and accomplishments 25 
which, if they had been united with fixed principles and 
civil courage, might have made him the foremost man 
of his age. These days, we are told, passed pleasantly ; 
1 See Addison's jRejiiarks on Italy. 



72 Essay on Addison 

and we can easily believe it. For Addison was a de- 
lightful companion when he was at his ease ; and the 
Duke, though he seldom forgot that he was a Talbot, 
had the invaluable art of putting at ease all who came 
5 near him. 

Addison gave some time to Florence, and especially 
to the sculptures in the Museum,^ which he preferred 
even to those of the Vatican. He then pursued his 
journey through a country in which the ravages of the 

lo last war were still discernible, and in which all men 
were looking forward with dread to a still fiercer con- 
flict. Eugene had already descended from the Rh^tian 
Alps, to dispute with Catinat the rich plain of Lom- 
bardy. The faithless ruler of Savoy was still reckoned 

15 among the allies of Louis. England had not yet actu- 
ally declared war against France ; but Manchester had 
left Paris : and the negotiations which produced the 
Grand Alliance against the House of Bourbon were 
in progress. Under such circumstances, it was de- 

20 sirable for an English traveller to reach neutral ground 
without delay. Addison resolved to cross Mont Cenis. 
It was December ; and the road was very different 
from that which now reminds the stranger of the power 
and genius of Napoleon. The winter, however, was 

25 mild ; and the passage was, for those times, easy. To 
this journey Addison alluded when, in the ode which 
we have already quoted, he said that for him the Divine 
goodness had warmed the hoary Alpine hills. 

1 The Uffizi Palace, which contains rare treasures of art. 



Essay on Addison 73 

It was in the midst of the eternal snow that he com- 
posed his Epistle to his friend Montague, now Lord 
Halifax. That Epistle, once widely renowned, is now 
known only to curious readers, and will hardly be con- 
sidered by those to whom it is known as in any per- 5 
ceptible degree heightening Addison's fame. It is, 
however, decidedly superior to any English composition 
which he had previously published. Nay, we think it 
quite as good as any poem in heroic metre which ap- 
peared during the interval bet^veen the death of Dry den 10 
and the publication of the Essay 07i Criticism. It con- 
tains passages as good as the second-rate passages of 
Pope, and would have added to the reputation of 
Parnell or Prior. 

But, whatever be the literary merits or defects of the 15 
Epistle, it undoubtedly does honour to the principles 
and spirit of the author. Halifax had now nothing to 
give. He had fallen from power, had been held up to 
obloquy, had been impeached by the House of Com- 
mons, and, though his Peers had dismissed the impeach- 20 
ment, had, as it seemed, little chance of ever again fill- 
ing high office. The Epistle, written at such a time, is 
one among many proofs that there was no mixture of 
cowardice or meanness in the suavity and moderation 
which distinguished Addison from all the other public 25 
men of those stormy times. 

At Geneva, the traveller learned that a partial change 
of ministry had taken place in England, and that the 
Earl of Manchester had become Secretary of State. 



74 Essay on Addison 

Manchester exerted himself to serve his young friend. 
It was thought advisable that an English agent should 
be near the person of Eugene in Italy; and Addison, 
whose diplomatic education was now finished, was the 
5 man selected. He was preparing to enter on his hon- 
ourable functions, when all his prospects were for a 
time darkened by the death of William the Third. 

Anne had long felt a strong aversion, personal, polit- 
ical, and religious, to the Whig party. That aversion 

10 appeared in the first measures of her reign. Manches- 
ter was deprived of the Seals, after he had held them 
only a few weeks. Neither Somers nor Halifax was 
sworn of the Privy Council. Addison shared the fate 
of his three patrons. His hopes of employment in the 

15 public service were at an end ; his pension was stopped ; 
and it was necessary for him to support himself by his 
own exertions. He became tutor ^ to a young English 
traveller, and appears to have rambled with his pupil 
over great part of Switzerland and German)^ At this 

20 time he wrote his pleasing treatise on Medals. It was 
not published till after his death ; but several distin- 
guished scholars saw the manuscript, and gave just 
praise to the grace of the style, and to the learning and 
ingenuity evinced by the quotations. 

25 From Germany Addison repaired to Holland, where 

he learned the melancholy news of his father's death. 

After passing some months in the United Provinces, he 

returned about the close of the year 1703 to England. 

1 This statement is probably incorrect. 



Essay on Addison 75 

He was there cordially received by his friends, and 
introduced by them into the Kit Cat Club, a society 
in which were collected all the various talents and 
accomplishments which then gave lustre to the Whig 
party. 5 

Addison was, during some months after his return 
from the Continent, hard pressed by pecuniary difficul- 
ties. But it was soon in the power of his noble patrons 
to serve him effectually. A political change, silent and 
gradual, but of the highest importance, was in daily prog- 10 
ress. The accession of Anne had been hailed by the 
Tories with transports of joy and hope ; and for a time 
it seemed that the Whigs had fallen never to rise again. 
The throne was surrounded by men supposed to be 
attached to the prerogative and to the church ; and 15 
among these none stood so high in the favour of the sov- 
ereign as the Lord Treasurer Godolphin and the Captain 
General Marlborough. 

The country gentlemen and country clergymen had 
fully expected that the policy of these ministers would 20 
be directly opposed to that which had been almost con- 
stantly followed by William ; that the landed interest 
would be favoured at the expense of trade ; that no 
addition would be made to the funded debt ; that the 
privileges conceded to Dissenters by the late King ^25 
would be curtailed, if not withdrawn ; that the war with 
France, if there must be such a war, would, on our part, 
be almost entirely naval ; and that the government 
1 William the Third. 



l6 Essay on Addison 

would avoid close connexions with foreign powers, and, 
above all, with Holland. 

But the country gentlemen and country clergymen 
were fated to be deceived, not for the last time. The 
5 prejudices and passions which raged without control in 
vicarages, in cathedral closes, and in the manor-houses 
of fox-hunting squires, were not shared by the chiefs of 
the ministry. Those statesmen saw that it was both 
for the public interest, and for their own interest, to 

lo adopt a Whig policy, at least as respected the alliances 
of the country and the conduct of the war. But, if the 
foreign policy of the Whigs were adopted, it was impos- 
sible to abstain from adopting also their financial policy. 
The natural consequences followed. The rigid Tories 

15 were alienated from the government. The votes of the 

Whigs became necessary to it. The votes of the Whigs 

could be secured only by further concessions ; and 

further concessions the Queen was induced to make. 

At the beginning of the year 1704, the state of parties 

20 bore a close analogy to the state of parties in 1826. 
In 1826 as in 1704, there was a Tory ministry divided 
into two hostile sections. The position of Mr. Canning 
and his friends in 1826 corresponded to that which 
Marlborough and Godolphin occupied in 1704. Not- 

25 tingham and Jersey were in 1704 what Lord Eldon and 
Lord Westmoreland were in 1826. The Whigs of 1704 
were in a situation resembling that in which the Whigs 
of 1826 stood. In 1704, Somers, Halifax, Sunderland, 
Cowper, were not in office. There was no avowed 



Essay on Addison 77. 

coalition between them and the moderate Tories. It is 
probable that no direct communication tending to such 
a coalition had yet taken place ; yet all men saw that 
such a coalition was inevitable, nay, that it was already 
half formed. Such, or nearly such, was the state of 5 
things when tidings arrived of the great battle fought 
at Blenheim on the 13th August, 1704. By the Whigs 
the news was hailed with transports of joy and pride. 
No fault, no cause of quarrel, could be remembered 
by them against the Commander whose genius had, 10 
in one day, changed the face of Europe, saved the 
Imperial throne,^ humbled the House of Bourbon, and 
secured the Act of Settlement against foreign hostility. 
The feeling of the Tories was very different. They 
could not indeed, without imprudence, openly express 15 
regret at an event so glorious to their country ; but their 
congratulations were so cold and sullen as to give deep 
disgust to the victorious general and his friends. 

Godolphin was not a reading man. Whatever time 
he could spare from business he was in the habit of 20 
spending at Newmarket or at the card table. But he 
was not absolutely indifferent to poetry ; and he was 
too intelligent an observer not to perceive that literature 
was a formidable engine of political warfare, and that 
the great Whig leaders had strengthened their party, 25 
and raised their character, by extending a liberal and 
judicious patronage to good writers. He was mortified, 
and not without reason, by the exceeding badness of 
1 The Holy Roman Empire. 



yS Essay on Addison 

the poems which appeared in honour of the battle of 
Blenheim. One of these poems has been rescued from 
oblivion by the exquisite absurdity of three lines : 

" Think of two thousand gentlemen at least, 
e And each man mounted on his capering beast; 

Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals."' 

Where to procure better verses the Treasurer did 
not know. He understood how to negotiate a loan, or 
remit a subsidy ; he was also well versed in the history 

10 of running horses and fighting cocks ; but his acquaint- 
ance among the poets was very small. He consulted 
Halifax; but Halifax affected to decline the office of 
adviser. He had, he said, done his best, when he had 
power, to encourage men whose abilities and acquire- 

15 ments might do honour to their country. Those times 
were over. Other maxims had prevailed. Merit was 
suffered to pine in obscurity; and the public money 
was squandered on the undeserving. " I do know," he 
added, " a gentleman who would celebrate the battle in 

20 a manner worthy of the subject ; but I will not name 
him." Godolphin, who was expert at the soft answer 
which turneth away wrath, and who was under the 
necessity of paying court to the Whigs, gently replied 
that there was too much ground for Halifax's com- 

25 plaints, but that what was amiss should in time be 
rectified, and that in the meantime the services of a 
man such as Halifax had described should be liberally 
rewarded. Halifax then mentioned Addison ; but. 



Essay on Addison 79 

mindful of the dignity as well as of the pecuniary 
interest of his friend, insisted that the minister should 
apply in the most courteous manner to Addison him- 
self ; and this Godolphin promised to do. 

Addison then occupied a garret up three pair of 5 
stairs, over a small shop in the Haymarket. In this 
humble lodging he was surprised, on the morning which 
followed the conversation between Godolphin and Hali- 
fax, by a visit from no less a person than the Right 
Honourable Henry Boyle, then Chancellor of the Ex- 10 
chequer, and afterwards Lord Carleton. This high- 
born minister had been sent by the Lord Treasurer as 
ambassador to the needy poet. Addison readily under- 
took the proposed task, a task which, to so good a Whig, 
was probably a pleasure. When the poem was little 15 
more than half finished, he showed it to Godolphin, 
who was delighted with it, and particularly with the 
famous similitude of the Angel.^ Addison w^as in- 
stantly appointed to a commissionership worth about 
tw^o hundred pounds a year, and was assured that this 20 
appointment was only an earnest of greater favours. 

The Ccijnpaign came forth, and was as much admired 
by the public as by the minister. It pleases us less on 
the whole than the Epistle to Halifax. Yet it un- 
doubtedly ranks high among the poems which ap- 25 
peared during the interval between the death of Dry- 
den and the dawn of Pope's genius. The chief merit 
of The Campaign, v/e think, is that which was noticed 
1 See Addison's The Cajupaign. 



8o Essay on Addison 

by Johnson, the manly and rational rejection of fiction. 
The first great poet ^ whose works have come down to 
us sang of war long before war became a science or a 
trade. If, in his time, there was enmity between two 
5 little Greek towns, each poured forth its crowd of citi- 
zens, ignorant of discipline, and armed with implements 
of labour rudely turned into weapons. On each side 
appeared conspicuous a few chiefs, whose wealth had 
enabled them to procure good armour, horses, and 

10 chariots, and whose leisure had enabled them to prac- 
tise military exercises. One such chief, if he were a 
man of great strength, agility, and courage, would 
probably be more formidable than twenty common 
men ; and the force and dexterity with which he flung 

15 his spear might have no inconsiderable share in deciding 
the event of the day. Such were probably the battles 
with which Homer was familiar. But Hom.er related 
the actions of men of a former generation, of men who 
sprang from the gods, and communed with the gods 

20 face to face ; of men, one of whom could with ease hurl 
rocks which two sturdy hinds of a later period would 
be unable even to lift. He therefore naturally repre- 
sented their martial exploits as resembling in kind, but 
far surpassing in magnitude, those of the stoutest and 

25 most expert combatants of his own age. Achilles, clad 
in celestial armour, drawn by celestial coursers, grasp- 
ing the spear which none but himself could raise, driv- 
ing all Troy and Lycia before him, and choking Sca- 
1 Homer : see what follows. 



Essay on Addison 8i 

mander with dead, was only a magnificent exaggeration 
of the real hero, who, strong, fearless, accustomed to 
the use of weapons, guarded by a shield and helmet of 
the best Sidonian fabric, and whirled along by horses 
of Thessalian breed, struck dow^n with his own right 5 
arm foe after foe. In all rude societies similar notions 
are found. There are at this day countries where the 
Lifeguardsman Shaw would be considered as a much 
greater warrior than the Duke of Wellington. Buona- 
parte loved to describe the astonishment with which 10 
the Mameltikes looked at his diminutive figure. Mou- 
rad Bey, distinguished above all his fellows by his 
bodily strength, and by the skill with which he managed 
his horse and his sabre, could not believe that a man 
who was scarcely five feet high, and rode like a butcher, 15 
could be the greatest soldier in Europe. 

Homer's descriptions of war had therefore as much 
truth as poetry requires. But truth was altogether 
wanting to the performances of those who, writing 
about battles which had scarcely anything in common 20 
with the battles of his times, servilely imitated his 
manner. The folly of Silius Italicus, in particular, is 
positively nauseous. He undertook to record in verse 
the vicissitudes of a great struggle between generals of 
the first order ; and his narrative is made up of the 25 
hideous wounds which these generals inflicted with 
their own hands. Asdrubal flings a spear w^hich grazes 
the shoulder of the consul Nero ; but Nero sends his 
spear into Asdrubal's side. Fabius slays Thuris and 

ESSAY ON ADDISON — 6 



82 Essay on Addison 

Butes and Maris and Arses, and the long-haired Ad- 
herbes, and the gigantic Thylis, and Sapharus and 
Monaesiis, and the trumpeter Morinus. Hannibal runs 
Perusinus through the groin with a stake, and breaks 
5 the backbone of Telesinus with a huge stone. This 
detestable fashion was copied in modern times, and 
continued to prevail down to the age of Addison. 
Several versifiers had described William turning thou- 
sands to flight by his single prowess, and dyeing the 
10 Boyne with Irish blood. Nay, so estimable a writer as 
John Philips, the author of The Splendid Shilling, repre- 
sented Marlborough as having won the battle of Blen- 
heim merely by strength of muscle and skill in fence. 
The following lines may serve as an example : 

15 " Churchill, viewing where 

The violence of Tallard most prevailed, 

Came to oppose his slaughtering arm. With speed 

Precipitate he rode, urging his way 

O'er hills of gasping heroes, and fallen steeds 
20 Rolling in death. Destruction, grim with blood, 

Attends his furious course. Around his head 

The glowing balls play innocent, while he 

With dire impetuous sway deals fatal blows 

Among the flying Gauls. In Gallic blood 
25 He dyes his reeking sword, and strews the ground 

With headless ranks. What can they do? Or how 

Withstand his wide-destroying sword?" 

Addison, with excellent sense and taste, departed from 

this ridiculous fashion. He reserved his praise for the 

30 qualities which made Marlborough truly great, — energy, 



Essay on Addison 83 

sagacity, military science. But, above all, the poet ex- 
tolled the firmness of that mind which, in the midst of 
confusion, uproar, and slaughter, examined and disposed 
everything with the serene wisdom of a higher intelli- 
gence. 5 

Here it was that he introduced the famous comparison 
of Marlborough to an Angel guiding the whirlwind. 
We will not dispute the general justice of Johnson's re- 
marks on this passage.^ But we must point out one 
circumstance which appears to have escaped all the 10 
critics. The extraordinary effect which this simile pro- 
duced when it first appeared, and w^hich to the following 
generation seemed inexplicable, is doubtless to be 
chiefly attributed to a line which most readers now re- 
gard as a feeble parenthesis, 15 
" Such as, of late, o'er pale Britannia pass'd." 

Addison spoke, not of a storm, but of the storm. The 
great tempest of November, 1703, the only tempest 
which in our latitude has equalled the rage of a tropical 
hurricane, had left a dreadful recollection in the minds 20 
of all men. No other tempest was ever in this country 
the occasion of a parliamentary address or of a public 
fast. Whole fleets had been cast away. Large mansions 
had been blown down. One prelate had been buried 
beneath the ruins of his palace. London and Bristol 25 
had presented the appearance of cities just sacked. 
Hundreds of families were still in mourning. The pros- 
trate trunks of large trees, and the ruins of houses, still 
1 See Johnson's Essay on Addison. 



84 Essay on Addison 

attested, in all the southern counties, the fury of the 
blast. The popularity which the simile of the Angel 
enjoyed among Addison's contemporaries has always 
seemed to us to be a remarkable instance of the advan- 
5 tage which, in rhetoric and poetry, the particular has 
over the general. 

Soon after The Campaign was published Addison's 
Narrative of his travels in Italy. The first effect pro- 
duced by this Narrative was disappointment. The 

10 crowd of readers who expected politics and scandal, 
speculations on the projects of Victor Amadeus, and 
anecdotes about the jollities of convents and the amours 
of cardinals and nuns, were confounded by finding that 
the writer's mind was much more occupied by the war 

15 between the Trojans and Rutulians than by the war 
between France and Austria ; and that he seemed to 
have heard no scandal of later date than the gallantries 
of the Empress Faustina. In time, however, the judge- 
ment of the many was overruled by that of the few ; 

20 and, before the book was reprinted, it was so eagerly 
sought that it sold for five times the original price. It 
is still read with pleasure : the style is pure and flowing ; 
the classical quotations and allusions are numerous and 
happy ; and we are now and then charmed by that 

25 singularly humane and delicate humour in which Addi- 
son excelled all men. Yet this agreeable work, even 
when considered merely as the history of a Hterary tour, 
may justly be censured on account of its faults of omis- 
sion. We have already said that, though rich in extracts 



Essay on Addison 85 

from the Latin poets, it contains scarcely any references 
to the Latin orators and historians. We must add that 
it contains Httle, or rather no information, respecting 
the history and Hterature of modern Italy. To the best 
of our remembrance, Addison does not mention Dante, 5 
Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boiardo, Berni, Lorenzo de' Medici, 
or Machiavelli. He coldly tells us that at Ferrara he 
saw the tomb of Ariosto, and that at Venice he heard 
the gondoliers sing verses of Tasso. But for Tasso and 
Ariosto he cared far less than for Valerius Flaccus and 10 
Sidonius Appollinaris. The gentle flow of the Ticin 
brings a line of Silius to his mind. The sulphurous 
steam of Albula suggests to him several passages of 
Martial. But he has not a word to say of the illustrious 
dead of Santa Croce ; he crosses the wood of Ravenna 15 
without recollecting the Spectre Huntsman, and "wan- 
ders up and down Rimini without one thought of Fran- 
cesca. At Paris, he had eagerly sought an introduction 
to Boileau ; but he seems not to have been at all aware 
that at Florence he was in the vicinity of a poet with 20 
whom Boileau could not sustain a comparison, of the 
greatest lyric poet of modern times, Vincenzio Filicaja.^ 
This is the more remarkable, because Filicaja was the 
favourite poet of the accomphshed Somers, under whose 
protection Addison travelled, and to whom the account 25 
of the Travels is dedicated. The truth is, that Addison 
knew little, and cared less, about the literature of mod- 
ern Italy. His favourite models were Latin. His 
1 See Macaulay's Essay on Milton. 



86 Essay on Addison 

favourite critics were French. Half the Tuscan poetry 
that he had read seemed to him monstrous, and the 
other half tawdry. 

His Travels were followed by the lively opera of 
5 Rosamond. This piece was ill set to music, and there- 
fore failed on the stage, but it completely succeeded in 
print, and is indeed excellent in its kind. The smooth- 
ness wdth which the verses glide, and the elasticity with 
which they bound, is, to our ears at least, very pleasing. 

10 We are inclined to think that if Addison had left heroic 
couplets to Pope, and blank verse to Rowe, and had 
employed himself in writing airy and spirited songs, his 
reputation as a poet would have stood far higher than 
it now does. Some years after his death, Rosamond 

15 was set to new music by Doctor Arne ; and was per- 
formed with complete success. Several passages long 
retained their popularity, and were daily sung, during 
the latter part of George the Second's reign, at all the 
harpsichords in England. 

20 While Addison thus amused himself, his prospects, 
and the prospects of his party, were constantly becom- 
ing brighter and brighter. In the spring of 1705, the 
ministers were freed from the restraint imposed by a 
House of Commons in which Tories of the most per- 

25 verse class had the ascendency. The elections were 
favourable to the Whigs. The coalition which had 
been tacitly and gradually formed was now openly 
avowed. The Great Seal was given to Cowper. 
Somers and Halifax were sworn of the Council. Hali- 



Essay on Addison 87 

fax was sent in the following year to cany the decora- 
tions of the order of the Garter to the Electoral Prince 
of Hanover, and was accompanied on this honourable 
mission by Addison, who had just been made Under- 
Secretary of State. The Secretary of State under 5 
whom Addison first served was Sir Charles Hedges, a 
Tory. But Hedges w^as soon dismissed to make room 
for the most vehement of Whigs, Charles, Earl of Sun- 
derland. In every department of the state, indeed, the 
High Churchmen were compelled to give place to their 10 
opponents. At the close of 1707, the Tories who still 
remained in office strove to rally, with Harley at their 
head. But the attempt, though favoured by the Queen, 
who had always been a Tory at heart, and who had 
now quarrelled with the Duchess of Marlborough, was 15 
unsuccessful. The time was not yet. The Captain 
General was at the height of popularity and glory. 
The Low Church party had a majority in Parliament. 
The country squires and rectors, though occasionally 
uttering a savage growl, were for the most part in a 20 
state of torpor, which lasted till they were roused into 
activity, and indeed into madness, by the prosecution of 
Sacheverell. Harley and his adherents were compelled 
to retire. The victory of the Whigs was complete. At 
the general election of 1708, their strength in the House 25 
of Commons became irresistible ; and before the end 
of that year, Somers was made Lord President of the 
Council, and Wharton Lord-lieutenant of Ireland. 
Addison sat for Malmsbury in the House of Com- 



88 Essay on Addison 

mons which was elected in 1708. But the House of 
Commons was not the field for him. The bashfulness 
of his nature made his wit and eloquence useless in 
debate. He once rose, but could not overcome his 
5 diffidence, and ever after remained silent. Nobody 
can think it strange that a great writer should fail as a 
speaker. But many, probably, will think it strange 
that Addison's failure as a speaker should have had no 
unfavourable effect on his success as a politician. In 

10 our time, a man of high rank and great fortune might, 
though speaking very little and very ill, hold a consid- 
erable post. But it would now be inconceivable that a 
mere adventurer, a man who, when out of office, must 
live by his pen, should in a few years become success- 

15 ively Under-Secretary of State, Chief Secretary for Ire- 
land, and Secretary of State, without some oratorical 
talent. Addison, without high birth, and with little 
property, rose to a post which dukes, the heads of the 
great houses of Talbot, Russell, and Bentinck, have 

20 thought it an honour to fill. Without opening his lips 
in debate, he rose to a post, the highest that Chatham 
or Fox ever reached. And this he did before he had 
been nine years in Parliament. We must look for the 
explanation of this seeming miracle to the peculiar cir- 

25 cumstances in which that generation was placed. 
During the interval which elapsed between the time 
when the censorship of the press ceased, and the time 
when parliamentary proceedings began to be freely re- 
ported, literary talents were, to a public man, of much 



Essay on Addison 89 

more importance, and oratorical talents of much less 
importance, than in our time. At present, the best way 
of giving rapid and wide publicity to a fact or an argu- 
ment is to introduce that fact or argument into a speech 
made in Parliament. If a political tract were to appear 5 
superior to the Conduct of the Allies^ or to the best 
numbers of The Freeholder, the circulation of such a 
tract would be languid indeed when compared with the 
circulation of every remarkable word uttered in the de- 
liberations of the legislature. A speech made in the 10 
House of Commons at four in the morning is on thirty 
thousand tables before ten. A speech made on the 
Monday is read on the Wednesday by multitudes in 
Antrim and Aberdeenshire. The orator, by the help 
of the shorthand writer, has to a great extent super- 15 
seded the pamphleteer. It was not so in the reign of 
Anne. The best speech could then produce no effect 
except on those who heard it. It was only by means of 
the press that the opinion of the public without doors 
could be influenced ; and the opinion of the public 20 
without doors could not but be of the highest impor- 
tance in a country governed by parliaments, and indeed 
at that time governed by triennial parliaments. The 
pen was therefore a more formidable political engine 
than the tongue. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox contended only 25 
in Parliament. But Walpole and Pulteney, the Pitt and 
Fox of an earlier period, had not done half of what was 
necessary, when they sat down amidst the acclamations 
of the House of Commons. They had still to plead 



90 Essay on Addison 

their cause before the country, and this they could do 
only by means of the press. Their works are now for- 
gotten, but it is certain that there were in Grub Street 
few more assiduous scribblers of Thoughts, Letters, 
Answers, Remarks, than these two great chiefs of parties. 
Pulteney, when leader of the Opposition, and possessed 
of thirty thousand a year, edited The Craftsman. Wal- 
pole, though not a man of literary habits, was the author 
of at least ten pamphlets, and retouched and corrected 

10 many more. These facts sufficiently show of how great 
importance literary assistance then was to the contend- 
ing parties. St. John was, certainly, in Anne's reign, 
the best Tory speaker ; Cowper was probably the best 
Whig speaker. But it may well be doubted whether St. 

15 John did so much for the Tories as Swift, and whether 
Cowper did so much for the Whigs as Addison. When 
these things are duly considered, it will not be thought 
strange that Addison should have climbed higher in the 
state than any other Englishman has ever, by means 

20 merely of literary talents, been able to climb. Swift 
would, in all probability, have climbed as high, if he had 
not been encumbered by his cassock and his pudding 
sleeves. As far as the homage of the great went. Swift 
had as much of it as if he had been Lord Treasurer. 

25 To the influence which Addison derived from his lit- 
erary talents was added all the influence which arises 
from character. The world, always ready to think the 
worst of needy political adventurers, was forced to make 
one exception. Restlessness, violence, audacity, laxity 



Essay on Addison 91 

of principle, are the vices ordinarily attributed to that 
class of men. But faction itself could not deny that 
Addison had, through all changes of fortune, been 
strictly faithful to his early opinions, and to his early 
friends ; that his integrity was without stain ; that his 5 
whole deportment indicated a fine sense of the becom- 
ing; that, in the utmost heat of controversy, his zeal 
was tempered by a regard for truth, humanity, and social 
decorum ; that no outrage could ever provoke him to 
retaliation unworthy of a Christian and a gentleman ; 10 
and that his only faults were a too sensitive delicacy, 
and a modesty which amounted to bashfulness. 

He was undoubtedly one of the most popular men of 
his time ; and much of his popularity he owed, we be- 
heve, to that very timidity which his friends lamented. 15 
That timidity often prevented him from exhibiting his 
talents to the best advantage. But it propitiated Nemesis. 
It averted that envy which would otherwise have been 
excited by fame so splendid, and by so rapid an eleva- 
tion. No man is so great a favourite with the public as 20 
he w^ho is at once an object of admiration, of respect, 
and of pity ; and such were the feelings which Addison 
inspired. Those who enjoyed the privilege of hearing 
his familiar conversation declared with one voice that 
it was superior even to his writings. The brilliant Mary 25 
Montagu said that she had known all the wits, and that 
Addison was the best company in the world. The 
malignant Pope was forced to own that there was a 
charm in Addison's talk which could be found nowhere 



92 Essay on Addison 

else. Swift, when burning with animosity against the 
Whigs, could not but confess to Stella that, after all, he 
had never known any associate so agreeable as Addison. 
Steele, an excellent judge of lively conversation, said 
5 that the conversation of Addison was at once the most 
polite, and the most mirthful, that could be imagined ; 
that it was Terence and Catullus in one, heightened 
by an exquisite something which was neither Terence 
nor Catullus, but Addison alone. Young, an excellent 

10 judge of serious conversation, said that when Addison 
was at his ease, he went on in a noble strain of thought 
and language, so as to chain the attention of every 
hearer. Nor were Addison's great colloquial powers 
more admirable than the courtesy and softness of heart 

15 which appeared in his conversation. At the same time, 
it would be too much to say that he was wholly devoid 
of the malice which is, perhaps, inseparable from a keen 
sense of the ludicrous. He had one habit which both 
Swift and Stella applauded, and which we hardly know 

20 how to blame. If his first attempts to set a presuming 
dunce right were ill received, he changed his tone, " as- 
sented with civil leer," and lured the flattered coxcomb 
deeper and deeper into absurdity. That such was his 
practice we should, we think, have guessed from his 

25 works. The Tatler's criticisms on Mr. Softley's sonnet, 
and The Spectator's dialogue with the politician who is 
so zealous for the honour of Lady Q — p — t — s, are 
excellent specimens of this innocent mischief. 

Such were Addison's talents for conversation. But 



Essay on Addison 93 

his rare gifts were not exhibited to crowds or to 
strangers. As soon as he entered a large company, as 
soon as he saw an unknown face, his Hps were sealed, 
and his manners became constrained. None who met 
him only in great assemblies would have been able to 5 
believe that he was the same man who had often kept 
a few friends listening and laughing round a table, from 
the time when the play ended, till the clock of St. Paul's 
in Covent Garden struck four. Yet, even at such 
a table, he was not seen to the best advantage. To 10 
enjoy his conversation in the highest perfection, it was 
necessary to be alone with him, and to hear him, in his 
own phrase, think aloud. " There is no such thing," 
he used to say, " as real conversation, but between two 
persons." 15 

This timidity, a timidity surely neither ungraceful nor 
unamiable, led Addison into the two most serious faults 
which can with justice be imputed to him. He found 
that wine broke the spell which lay on his fine intellect, 
and was therefore too easily seduced into convivial 20 
excess.^ Such excess was in that age regarded, even 
by grave men, as the most venial of all peccadilloes, 
and was so far from being a mark of ill breeding that 
it was almost essential to the character of a fine gentle- 
man. But the smallest speck is seen on white ground ; 25 
and almost all the biographers of Addison have said 
something about this failing. Of any other statesman 
or writer of Queen Anne's reign, we should no more 
1 See Thackeray's English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century. 



94 Essay on Addison 

think of saying that he sometimes took too much wine, 
than that he wore a long wig and a sword. 

To the excessive modesty of Addison's nature, we 
must ascribe another fault which generally arises from 

5 a very different cause. He became a little too fond of 
seeing himself surrounded by a small circle of admirers, 
to whom he was as a king, or rather as a god. All 
these men were far inferior to him in ability, and some 
of them had very serious faults. Nor did those faults 

10 escape his observation ; for, if ever there was an eye 
which saw through and through men, it was the eye of 
Addison. But with the keenest observation, and the 
finest sense of the ridiculous, he had a large charity. 
The feeling with which he looked on most of his hum- 

15 ble companions was one of benevolence, slightly tinc- 
tured with contempt. He was at perfect ease in their 
company ; he was grateful for their devoted attach- 
ment ; and he loaded them with benefits. Their venera- 
tion for him appears to have exceeded that with which 

20 Johnson was regarded by Boswell, or Warburton by 
Hurd. It was not in the power of adulation to turn 
such a head, or deprave such a heart, as Addison's. 
But it must in candour be admitted that he contracted 
some of the faults which can scarcely be avoided by 

25 any person who is so unfortunate as to be the oracle of 
a small literary coterie. 

One member of this little society was Eustace 
Budgell, a young Templar of some literature, and a 
distant relation of Addison. There was at this time no 



Essay on Addison 95 

stain on the character of Budgell, and it is not improb- 
able that his career would have been prosperous and 
honourable, if the life of his cousin had been prolonged. 
But, when the master was laid in the grave, the dis- 
ciple broke loose from all restraint, descended rapidly 5 
from one degree of vice and misery to another, ruined 
his fortune by follies, attempted to repair it by crimes, 
and at length closed a wicked and unhappy life by self- 
murder. Yet, to the last, the wretched man, gambler, 
lampooner, cheat, forger, as he was, retained his affec- 10 
tion and veneration for Addison, and recorded those 
feelings in the last lines which he traced before he hid 
himself from infamy under London Bridge. 

Another of Addison's favourite companions was 
Ambrose Phillipps, a good Whig and a middling poet, 15 
who had the honour of bringing into fashion a species 
of composition which has been called, after his name, 
Namby Pamby. But the most remarkable members of 
the little senate, as Pope long afterwards called it, were 
Richard Steele and Thomas Tickell. 20 

Steele had known Addison from childhood. They 
had been together at the Charter House and at Oxford ; 
but circumstances had then, for a time, separated them 
widely. Steele had left college without taking a de- 
gree, had been disinherited by a rich relation, had led a 25 
vagrant life, had served in the army, had tried to find 
the philosopher's stone, and had written a religious 
treatise and several corhedies. He was one of those 
people whom it is impossible either to hate or to 



96 Essay on Addison 

respect. His temper was sweet, his affections warm, 
his spirits lively, his passions strong, and his principles 
weak. His life was spent in sinning and repenting ; in 
inculcating what was right, and doing what was wrong. 
5 In speculation, he was a man of piety and honour ; in 
practice he was much of the rake and a little of the 
swindler. He was, however, so good-natured that it 
was not easy to be seriously angry with him, and that 
even rigid moralists felt more inclined to pity than to 

10 blame him, when he diced himself into a sponging- 
house or drank himself into a fever. Addison regarded 
Steele with kindness not unmingled with scorn ; tried, 
with little success, to keep him out of scrapes ; intro- 
duced him to the great ; procured a good place for him ; 

15 corrected his plays ; and, though by no means rich, lent 
him large sums of money. One of these loans appears, 
from a letter dated in August, 1708, to have amounted 
to a thousand pounds. These pecuniary transactions 
probably led to frequent bickerings. It is said that, on 

20 one occasion, Steele's negligence, or dishonesty, pro- 
voked Addison to repay himself by the help of a bailiff. 
We cannot join with Miss Aikin in rejecting this story. 
Johnson heard it from Savage, who heard it from 
Steele. Few private transactions which took place a 

25 hundred and twenty years ago are proved by stronger 
evidence than this. But we can by no means agree with 
those who condemn Addison's severity. The most 
amiable of mankind may well be moved to indignation, 
when what he has earned hardly, and lent with great 



Essay on Addison 97 

inconvenience to himself, for the purpose of relieving 
a friend in distress, is squandered with insane profusion. 
We will illustrate our meaning by an example, which is 
not the less striking because it is taken from fiction. 
Dr. Harrison, in Fielding's Amelia^ is represented as 5 
the most benevolent of human beings ; yet he takes in 
execution, not only the goods, but the person, of his 
friend Booth. Dr. Harrison resorts to this strong 
measure because he has been informed that Booth, while 
pleading poverty as an excuse for not paying just debts, 10 
has been buying fine jewellery, and setting up a coach. 
No person who is well acquainted with Steele's life and 
correspondence can doubt that he behaved quite as ill 
to Addison as Booth was accused of behaving to Dr. 
Harrison. The real history, we have little doubt, was 15 
something like this : A letter comes to Addison, im- 
ploring help in pathetic terms, and promising reforma- 
tion and speedy repayn^ent. Poor Dick ^ declares that 
he has not an inch of candle, or a bushel of coals, or 
credit with the butcher for a shoulder of mutton. Ad- 20 
dison is moved. He determines to deny himself some 
medals which are wanting to his series of the Twelve 
Caesars ; to put off buying the new edition of Bayle's 
Dictionary ; and to wear his old sword and buckles 
another year. In this way he manages to send a hun-25 
dred pounds to his friend. The next day he calls on 
Steele, and finds scores of gentlemen and ladies assem- 
bled. The fiddles are playing. The table is groaning 
1 Steele. 

ESSAY ON ADDISON — 7 



98 Essay on Addison 

under Champagne, Burgundy, and Pyramids of sweet- 
meats. Is it strange that a man whose kindness is thus 
abused should send sheriff's officers to reclaim what is 
due to him ? 

5 Tickell was a young man, fresh from Oxford, who 
had introduced himself to public notice by writing a 
most ingenious and graceful little poem in praise of the 
opera of Rosa7nond. He deserved, and at length at- 
tained, the first place in Addison's friendship. For a 

10 time Steele and Tickell were on good terms. But they 
loved Addison too much to love each other, and at 
length became as bitter enemies as the rival bulls in 
Virgil. 

At the close of 1708 Wharton became Lord-lieutenant 

15 of Ireland, and appointed Addison Chief Secretary. 
Addison was consequently under the necessity of quitting 
London for Dublin. Besides the chief secretaryship, 
which was then worth about two thousand pounds a 
year, he obtained a patent appointing him keeper of 

20 the Irish Records for life, with a salary of three or four 
hundred a year. Budgell accompanied his cousin in 
the capacity of Private Secretary. 

Wharton and Addison had nothing in common but 
Whiggism. The Lord-lieutenant was not only licen- 

25 tious and corrupt, but was distinguished from other 
Hbertines and jobbers by a callous impudence which 
presented the strongest contrast to the Secretary's 
gentleness and delicacy. Many parts of the Irish ad- 
ministration at this time appear to have deserved seri- 



Essay on Addison 99 

ous blame. But against Addison there was not a 
murmur. He long afterwards asserted, what all the 
evidence which we have ever seen tends to prove, that 
his diligence and integrity gained the friendship of all 
the most considerable persons in Ireland. 5 

The parliamentary career of Addison in Ireland has, 
we think, wholly escaped the notice of all his biogra- 
phers. He was elected member for the borough of 
Cavan in the summer of 1709 ; and in the journals of 
two sessions his name frequently occurs. Some of the 10 
entries appear to indicate that he so far overcame his 
timidity as to make speeches. Nor is this by any 
means improbable, for the Irish House of Commons 
was a far less formidable audience than the English 
House, and many tongues which were tied by fear in 15 
the greater assembly became fluent in the smaller. 
Gerard Hamilton, for example, who, from fear of losing 
the fame gained by his single speech, sat mute at West- 
minster during forty years, spoke with great effect at 
Dublin when he was Secretary to Lord Halifax. 20 

While Addison was in Ireland, an event occurred to 
which he owes his high and permanent rank among 
British writers. As yet his fame rested on perform- 
ances which, though highly respectable, were not built 
for duration, and which would, if he had produced 25 
nothing else, have now been almost forgotten : on some 
excellent Latin verses ; on some English verses which 
occasionally rose above mediocrity, and on a book of 
travels, agreeably written, but not indicating any extraor- 

Lf (^ 
. or \j. 



loo Essay on Addison 

dinary powers of mind. These works showed him to 
be a man of taste, sense, and learning. The time had 
come when he was to prove himself a man of genius, 
and to enrich our literature with compositions which 
5 will live as long as the English language. 

In the spring of 1709 Steele formed a literary project, 
of which he was far indeed from foreseeing the con- 
sequences. Periodical papers had during many years 
been published in London. Most of these were politi- 

10 cal ; but in some of them questions of morality, taste, 
and love casuistry had been discussed. The literary 
merit of these works was small indeed ; and even their 
names are now known only to the curious. 

Steele had been appointed Gazetteer by Sunderland, 

15 at the request, it is said, of Addison, and thus had 
access to foreign intelligence earlier and more authentic 
than was in those times wathin the reach of an ordinary 
news-writer. This circumstance seems to have suggested 
to him the scheme of publishing a periodical paper on a 

20 new plan. It was to appear on the days on w^hich the 
post left London for the country, which were, in that gen- 
eration, the Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. It was 
to contain the foreign news, accounts of theatrical repre- 
sentations, and the literary gossip of Will's and of the 

25 Grecian. It was also to contain remarks on the fashion- 
able topics of the day, compliments to beauties, pas- 
quinades on noted sharpers, and criticisms on popular 
preachers. The aim of Steele does not appear to have 
been at first higher than this. He was not ill qualified 



Essay on Addison loi 

to conduct the work which he had planned. His pub- 
he inteUigence he drew from the best sources. He 
knew the town, and had paid dear for his knowledge. 
He had read much more than the dissipated men of 
that time were in the habit of reading. He was a rake 5 
among scholars, and a scholar among rakes. His style 
was easy and not incorrect ; and though his wit and 
humour were of no high order, his gay animal spirits 
imparted to his compositions an air of vivacity which 
ordinary readers could hardly distinguish from comic 10 
genius. His writings have been well compared to those 
light wines which, though deficient in body and flavour, 
are yet a pleasant small drink, if not kept too long, or 
carried too far. 

Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was an imag- 15 
inary person, almost as well known in that age as Mr. 
Paul Pry or Mr. Samuel Pickwick in ours. Swift had 
assumed the name of Bickerstaff in a satirical pamphlet 
against Partridge, the maker of almanacs. Partridge 
had been fool enough to publish a furious reply. Bick-20 
erstaff had rejoined in a second pamphlet still more 
diverting than the first. All the wits had combined to 
keep up the joke, and the town was long in convulsions 
of laughter. Steele determined to employ the name 
which this controversy had made popular ; and in April, 25 
1709, it was announced that Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, 
Astrologer, was about to publish a paper called The 
Tafkr. 

Addison had not been consulted about this scheme ; 



I02 Essay on Addison 

but as soon as he heard of it, he determined to give his 
assistance. The effect of that assistance cannot be 
better described than in Steele's own words. " I 
fared," he said, " Hke a distressed prince who calls in 
5 a powerful neighbour to his aid. I was undone by my 
auxiliary. When I had once called him in, I could not 
subsist without dependence on him." "The paper," 
he says elsewhere, " was advanced indeed. It was 
raised to a greater thing than I intended it." 

lo It is probable that Addison, when he sent across St. 
George's Channel his first contributions to The Tatler 
had no notion of the extent and variety of his own 
powers. He was the possessor of a vast mine, rich with 
a hundred ores. But he had been acquainted only with 

15 the least precious part of his treasures, and had hitherto 
contented himself with producing sometimes copper 
and sometimes lead, intermingled with a little silver. 
All at once, and by mere accident, he had lighted on an 
inexhaustible vein of the finest gold. 

20 The mere choice and arrangement of his words 
would have sufficed to make his essays classical. For 
never, not even by Dryden, not even by Temple, had 
the English language been written with such sweetness, 
grace, and facility. But this was the smallest part of 

25 Addison's praise. Had he clothed his thoughts in the 
half French style of Horace Walpole, or in the half 
Latin style of Dr. Johnson, or in the half German jar- 
gon of the present day, his genius would have triumphed 
over all faults of manner. As a moral satirist he stands 



Essay on Addison 103 

unrivalled. If ever the best Tatlers and Spectators 
were equalled in their own kind, we should be inclined 
to guess that it must have been by the lost comedies of 
Menander. 

In wit, properly so called, Addison w^as not inferior 5 
to Cowley or Butler. No single ode of Cowley contains 
so many happy analogies as are crowded into the lines 
to Sir Godfrey Kneller ; and we would undertake to 
collect from the Spectators as great a number of ingen- 
ious illustrations as can be found in Hudibras. The 10 
still higher faculty of invention Addison possessed in 
still larger measure. The numerous fictions, generally 
original, often wild and grotesque, but always singularly 
graceful and happy, which are found in his essays, fully 
entitle him to the rank of a great poet, a rank to which 15 
his metrical compositions give him no claim. As an 
observer of life, of manners, of all the shades of human 
character, he stands in the first class. And what he 
observed he had the art of communicating in two widely 
different ways. He could describe virtues, vices, 20 
habits, whims, as well as Clarendon. But he could do 
something better. He could call human beings into 
existence, and make them exhibit themselves. If we . 
wish to find anything more vivid than Addison's best 
portraits, we must go either to Shakespeare or to 25 
Cervantes. 

But what shall we say of Addison's humour, of his 
sense of the ludicrous, of his power of awakening that 
sense in others, and of drawing mirth from incidents 



I04 Essay on Addison 

which occur every day, and from Uttle peculiarities of 
temper and manner, such as may be found in every 
man ? We feel the charm : we give ourselves up to it : 
but we strive in vain to analyse it. 
5 Perhaps the best way of describing Addison's pecul- 
iar pleasantry is to compare it with the pleasantry of 
some other great satirists. The three most eminent 
masters of the art of ridicule, during the eighteenth 
century, were, we conceive, Addison, Swift, and Vol- 

lotaire. Which of the three had the greatest power of 
moving laughter may be questioned. But each of them, 
wdthin his own domain, was supreme. 

Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His merriment is 
without disguise or restraint. He gambols ; he grins ; 

15 he shakes his sides ; he points the finger ; he turns up 
the nose ; he shoots out the tongue. The manner of 
Swift is the very opposite to this. He moves laughter, 
but never joins in it. He appears in his works such as 
he appeared in society. All the company are convulsed 

20 with merriment, while the Dean,^ the author of all the 
mirth, preserves an invincible gravity, and even sour- 
ness of aspect, and gives utterance to the most eccentric 
and ludicrous fancies, with the air of a man reading 
the commination service. 

25 The manner of Addison is as remote from that of 

Swift as from that of Voltaire. He neither laughs out 

like the French wit, nor, like the Irish wit, throws a 

double portion of severity into his countenance while 

1 Swift. 



Essay on Addison 105 

laughing inwardly ; but preserves a look peculiarly his 
own, a look of demure serenity, disturbed only by an 
arch sparkle of the eye, an almost imperceptible eleva- 
tion of the brow, an almost imperceptible curl of the lip. 
His tone is never that either of a Jack Pudding or of 5 
a Cynic. It is that of a gentleman, in whom the quick- 
est sense of the ridiculous is constantly tempered by 
good nature and good breeding. 

We own that the humour of Addison is, in our opin- 
ion, of a more delicious flavour than the humour of 10 
either Swift or Voltaire. Thus much, at least, is cer- 
tain, that both Swift and Voltaire have been success- 
fully mimicked, and that no man has yet been able to 
mimic Addison. The letter of the Abbe Coyer to Pan- 
sophe is Voltaire all over, and imposed, during a long 15 
time, on the Academicians of Paris. There are pas- 
sages in Arbuthnot's satirical works which we, at least, 
cannot distinguish from Swift's best writing. But of 
the many eminent men who have made Addison their 
model, though several have copied his mere diction 20 
with happy effect, none has been able to catch the tone 
of his pleasantry. In The Worlds in The Co7moisseur, 
in 27ie Minvr, in The Lounger, there are numerous 
papers written in obvious imitation of his Tatlers and 
Spectators. Most of those papers have some merit ; 25 
many are very lively and amusing ; but there is not a 
single one which could be passed off as Addison's on a 
critic of the smallest perspicacity. 

But that which chiefly distinguishes Addison from 



io6 Essay on Addison 

Swift, from Voltaire, from almost all the other great 
masters of ridicule, is the grace, the nobleness, the 
moral purity, which we find even in his merriment. 
Severity, gradually hardening and darkening into mis- 
5 anthropy, characterizes the works of Swift. The nature 
of Voltaire was, indeed, not inhuman ; but he venerated 
nothing. Neither in the masterpieces of art nor in the 
purest examples of virtue, neither in the Great First 
Cause nor in the awful enigma of the grave, could he 

losee anything but subjects for drollery. The more 
solemn and august the theme, the more monkey-like 
was his grimacing and chattering. The mirth of Swift 
is the mirth of Mephistopheles ; the mirth of Voltaire is 
the mirth of Puck. If, as Soame Jenyns oddly imag- 

15 ined, a portion of the happiness of Seraphim and just 
men made perfect be derived from an exquisite per- 
ception of the ludicrous, their mirth must surely be 
none other than the mirth of Addison ; a mirth con- 
sistent with tender compassion for all that is frail, and 

20 with profound reverence for all that is sublime. Noth- 
ing great, nothing amiable, no moral duty, no doctrine 
of natural or revealed religion, has ever been associated 
by Addison with any degrading idea. His humanity is 
without a parallel in literary history. The highest proof 

25 of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing 
it. No kind of power is more formidable than the 
power of making men ridiculous ; and that power Addi- 
son possessed in boundless measure. How grossly 
that power was abused by Swift and by Voltaire is well 



Essay on Addison 107 

known. But of Addison it may be confidently affirmed 
that he has blackened no man's character, nay, that it 
would be difficult, if not impossible, to find in all the 
volumes which he has left us a single taunt which can be 
called ungenerous or unkind. Yet he had detractors, 5 
whose malignity might have seemed to justify as terrible 
a revenge as that which men, not superior to him in 
genius, wreaked on Bettesworth and on Franc de Pom- 
pignan. He was a politician ; he was the best writer 
of his party ; he lived in times of fierce excitement, 10 
in times when persons of high character and station 
stooped to scurrility such as is now practised only by 
the basest of mankind. Yet no provocation and no 
example could induce him to return railing for railing. 

Of the service which his essays rendered to morality 15 
it is difficult to speak too highly. It is true that, when 
The Tailer appeared, that age of outrageous profane- 
ness and licentiousness which followed the Restoration 
had passed away. Jeremy Collier had shamed the 
theatres into something which, compared with the 20 
excesses of Etherege and Wycherley, might be called 
decency. Yet there still lingered in the public mind a 
pernicious notion that there was some connexion be- 
tween genius and profligacy, between the domestic 
virtues and the sullen formality of the Puritans. That 25 
error it is the glory of Addison to have dispelled. He 
taught the nation that the faith and the morahty of 
Hale and Tillotson might be found in company with wit 
more sparkling than the wit of Congreve, and with 



io8 Essay on Addison 

humour richer than the humour of Vanbrugh. So ef- 
fectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery 
which had recently been directed against virtue, that, 
since his time, the open violation of decency has always 
5 been considered among us as the mark of a fool. And 
this revolution, the greatest and most salutary ever ef- 
fected by any satirist, he accomplished, be it remem- 
bered, without writing one personal lampoon. 

In the early contributions of Addison to The Tatler 

10 his peculiar powers were not fully exhibited. Yet from 
the first, his superiority to all his coadjutors was evi- 
dent. Some of his later Tatlers are fully equal to any- 
thing that he ever wrote. Among the portraits, we most 
admire Tom Folio, Ned Softly, and the Pohtical Uphol- 

15 sterer. The proceedings of the Court of Honour, the 
Thermometer of Zeal, the story of the Frozen Words, the 
Memoirs of the Shilling, are excellent specimens of that 
ingenious and lively species of fiction in which Addison 
excelled all men. There is one still better paper of the 

20 same class. But though that paper, a hundred and 
thirty-three years ago, was probably thought as edify- 
ing as one of Smalridge's sermons, we dare not indi- 
cate it to the squeamish readers of the nineteenth 
century. 

25 During the session of Parliament which commenced 
in November, 1709, and which the impeachment of 
Sacheverell has made memorable, Addison appears to 
have resided in London. The Tatle^- was now more 
popular than any periodical paper had ever been ; and 



Essay on Addison 109 

his connexion with it was generally known. It was not 
known, however, that almost everything good in The 
Tatler was his. The truth is, that the fifty or sixty 
numbers which we owe to him were not merely the 
best, but so decidedly the best that any five of them are 5 
more valuable than all the two hundred numbers in 
which he had no share. 

He required, at this time, all the solace which he 
could derive from literary success. The Queen ^ had 
always disliked the Whigs. She had during some years 10 
disliked the Marlborough family. But, reigning by a 
disputed title, she could not venture directly to oppose 
herself to a majority of both Houses of Parliament; 
and, engaged as she was in a war on the event of which 
her own crown was staked, she could not venture to 15 
disgrace a great and successful general. But at length, 
in the year 17 10, the cause which had restrained her 
from showing her aversion to the Lo\v Church party 
ceased to operate. The trial of Sacheverell produced 
an outbreak of public feeling scarcely less violent than 20 
the outbreaks which we can ourselves remember in 
1820, and in 1831. The country gentleman, the coun- 
try clergymen, the rabble of the towns, were all, for 
once, on the same side. It was clear that, if a general 
election took place before the excitement abated, the 25 
Tories would have a majority. The services of Marl- 
borough had been so splendid that they were no longer 
necessary. The Queen's throne was secure from all 
1 Anne. 



no Essay on Addison 

attacks on the part of Louis. ^ Indeed, it seemed much 
more Hkely that the Enghsh and German armies would 
divide the spoils of Versailles and Marli than that a 
marshal of France would bring back the Pretender to 
5 St. James's. The Queen, acting by the advice of Har- 
ley, determined to dismiss her servants. In June the 
change commenced. Sunderland was the first who 
fell. The Tories exulted over his fall. The Whigs 
tried, during a few weeks, to persuade themselves that 

10 her Majesty had acted only from personal dislike to the 
Secretary, and that she meditated no further alteration. 
But, early in August, Godolphin was surprised by a 
letter from Anne, which directed him to break his white 
staff. Even after this event, the irresolution or dissimu- 

15 lation of Harley kept up the hopes of the Whigs dur- 
ing another month ; and then the ruin became rapid 
and violent. The Parliament was dissolved. The min- 
isters were turned out. The Tories were called to 
office. The tide of popularity ran violently in favour 

20 of the High Church party. That party, feeble in the 
late House of Commons, was now irresistible. The 
power which the Tories had thus suddenly acquired, 
they used with blind and stupid ferocity. The howl 
which the whole pack set up for prey and for blood 

25 appalled even him who had roused and unchained them. 

When, at this distance of time, we calmly review the 

conduct of the discarded ministers, we cannot but feel a 

movement of indignation at the injustice with which 

1 Louis the Fourteenth. 



Essay on Addison 1 1 1 

they were treated. No body of men had ever adminis- 
tered the government with more energy, abiUty, and 
moderation ; and their success had been proportioned 
to their wisdom. They had saved Holland and Ger- 
many. They had humbled France. They had, as it 5 
seemed, all but torn Spain from the House of Bourbon. 
They had made England the first power in Europe. 
At home they had united England and Scotland. They 
had respected the rights of conscience and the liberty of 
the subject. They retired, leaving their country at the 10 
height of prosperity and glory. And yet they were pur- 
sued to their retreat by such a roar of obloquy as was never 
raised against the government which threw away thir- 
teen colonies, or against the government which sent a 
gallant army to perish in the ditches of Walcheren. 15 

None of the Whigs suffered more in the general wreck 
than Addison. He had just sustained some heavy 
pecuniary losses, of the nature of which we are imper- 
fectly informed, when his secretaryship was taken from 
him. He had reason to believe that he should also be 20 
deprived of the small Irish office which he held by 
patent. He had just resigned his Fellowship. It seems 
probable that he had already ventured to raise his eyes 
to a great lady,^ and that, while his political friends 
were in power, and while his own fortunes were rising, 25 
he had been, in the phrase of the romances which were 
then fashionable, permitted to hope. But Mr. Addison 
the ingenious writer, and Mr. Addison the Chief Secre- 
1 Countess of Warwick. 



112 Essay on Addison 

tary, were, in her ladyship's opinion, two very different 
persons. All these calamities united, however, could 
not disturb the serene cheerfulness of a mind conscious 
of innocence, and rich in its own wealth. He told his 
5 friends, with smiling resignation, that they ought to 
admire his philosophy ; that he had lost at once his 
fortune, his place, his Fellowship, and his mistress ; that 
he must think of turning tutor again, and yet that his 
spirits were as good as ever. 

10 He had one consolation. Of the unpopularity which 
his friends had incurred, he had no share. Such was 
the esteem with which he was regarded that, while the 
most violent measures were taken for the purpose of 
forcing Tory members on Whig corporations, he was 

15 returned to Parliament without even a contest. Swift, 
who was now in London, and who had already deter- 
mined on quitting the Whigs, wrote to Stella in these 
remarkable words : " The Tories carry it among the 
new members six to one. Mr. Addison's election has 

20 passed easy and undisputed ; and I believe if he had a 
mind to be king, he would hardly be refused." 

The good will with which the Tories regarded Addi- 
son is the more honourable to him, because it had not 
been purchased by any concession on his part. During 

25 the general election he published a political Journal, 
entitled The Whig Examiner. Of that Journal it may 
be sufficient to say that Johnson, in spite of his strong 
political prejudices, pronounced it to be superior in wit 
to any of Swift's writings on the other side. When it 



Essay on Addison 1 13 

ceased to appear, Swift, in a letter to Stella, expressed 
his exultation at the death of so formidable an antago- 
nist. " He might well rejoice," says Johnson, "at the 
death of that which he could not have killed." " On no 
occasion," he adds, " was the genius of Addison more 5 
vigorously exerted, and on none did the superiority of 
his powers more evidently appear." 

The only use which Addison appears to have made 
of the favour with which he was regarded by the Tories 
was to save some of his friends from the general ruin 10 
of the Whig party. He felt himself to be in a situation 
which made it his duty to take a decided part in poli- 
tics. But the case of Steele and of Ambrose Phillipps 
was different. For Phillipps, Addison even conde- 
scended to solicit, with what success we have not ascer- 15 
tained. Steele held two places. He was Gazetteer, 
and he was also a Commissioner of Stamps. The Gazette 
was taken from him. But he was suft'ered to retain his 
place in the Stamp Office, on an implied understanding 
that he should not be active against the new govern- 20 
ment : and he was, during more than two years, induced 
by Addison to observe this armistice with tolerable 
fidelity. 

Isaac Bickerstaff^ accordingly became silent upon 
politics, and the article of news, which had once formed 25 
about one third of his paper, altogether disappeared. 
The Tatler had completely changed its character. It 
was now nothing but a series of essays on books, morals, 
1 Steele's nom de plume. 

ESSAY ON ADDISON — 8 



114 Essay on Addison 

and manners. Steele therefore resolved to bring it to a 
close, and to commence a new work on an improved plan. 
It was announced that this new work would be pub- 
lished daily. The undertaking was generally regarded 
5 as bold, or rather rash ; but the event amply justified 
the confidence with which Steele relied on the fertility 
of Addison's genius. On the second of January, 171 1, 
appeared the last Tatler. At the beginning of March 
following, appeared the first of an incomparable series 

10 of papers, containing observations on life and literature 
by an imaginary Spectator. 

The Spectator himself was conceived and drawn by 
Addison ; and it is not easy to doubt that the portrait 
was meant to be in some features a likeness of the 

15 painter. The Spectator is a gentleman who, after pass- 
ing a studious youth at the University, has travelled on 
classic ground, and has bestowed much attention on 
curious points of antiquity. He has, on his return, 
fixed his residence in London, and has observed all the 

20 forms of life which are to be found in that great city ; 
has daily listened to the wits of Will's, has smoked with 
the philosophers of the Grecian, and has mingled with 
the parsons at Child's, and with the politicians at 
St. James's. In the morning, he often Hstens to the 

25 hum of the Exchange ; in the evening, his face is con- 
stantly to be seen in the pit of Drury Lane theatre. 
But an insurmountable bashfulness prevents him from 
opening his mouth, except in a small circle of intimate 
friends. 



Essay on Addison 115 

These friends were first sketched by Steele. Four of 
the club, the templar, the clergyman, the soldier, and 
the merchant, were uninteresting figures, fit only for 
a background. But the other two, an old country bar- 
onet and an old town rake, though not delineated with 5 
a very delicate pencil, had some good strokes. Addison 
took the rude outlines into his own hands, retouched 
them, coloured them, and is in truth the creator of the 
Sir Roger de Coverley and the Will Honeycomb with 
whom we are all familiar. 10 

The plan of The Spectator must be allowed to be both 
original and eminently happy. Every valuable essay 
in the series may be read with pleasure separately ; yet 
the five or six hundred essays form a whole, and a whole 
which has the interest of a novel. It must be remem- 15 
bered, too, that at that time no novel, giving a lively 
and powerful picture of the common life and manners 
of England, had appeared. Richardson was working 
as a compositor. Fielding was robbing birds' nests. 
Smollett was not yet born. The narrative, therefore, 20 
which connects together the Spectator's essays, gave to 
our ancestors their first taste of an exquisite and untried 
pleasure. That narrative was indeed constructed with 
no art or labour. The events were such events as occur 
every day. Sir Roger comes up to town to see Eugenio, 25 
as the worthy baronet always calls Prince Eugene, goes 
with the Spectator on the water to Spring Gardens, 
walks among the tombs in the Abbey, and is frightened 
by the Mohawks, but conquers his apprehension so far 



ii6 Essay on Addison 

as to go to the theatre when the Distressed Mother is 
acted. The Spectator pays a visit in the summer to 
Coveriey Hall, is charmed with the old house, the old 
butler, and the old chaplain, eats a jack caught by Will 
5 Wimble, rides to the assizes, and hears a point of law dis- 
cussed by Tom Touchy. At last a letter from the 
honest butler brings to the club the news that Sir Roger 
is dead. Will Honeycomb marries and reforms at sixty. 
The club breaks up ; and the Spectator resigns his 

10 functions. Such events can hardly be said to form a 
plot ; yet they are related with such truth, such grace, 
such wit, such humour, such pathos, such knowledge of 
the human heart, such knowledge of the ways of the 
world, that they charm us on the hundredth perusal. 

15 We have not the least doubt that if Addison had written 
a novel, on an extensive plan, it would have been su- 
perior to any that we possess. As it is, he is entitled to 
be considered not only as the greatest of the English 
essayists, but as the forerunner of the great English 

20 novelists. 

We say this of x\ddison alone ; for Addison is The 
Spectator. About three sevenths of the work are his ; 
and it is no exaggeration to say that his worst essay is as 
good as the best essay of any of his coadjutors. His best 

25 essays approach near to absolute perfection ; nor is their 
excellence more wonderful than their variety. His in- 
vention never seems to flag ; nor is he ever under the 
necessity of repeating himself, or of wearing out a sub- 
ject. There are no dregs in his wine. He regales us 



Essay on Addison 117 

after the fashion of that prodigal nabob who held that 
there was only one good glass in a bottle. As soon as 
we have tasted the first sparkling foam of a jest, it is 
withdrawn, and a fresh draught of nectar is at our lips. 
On the Monday we have an allegory as hvely and in- 5 
genious as Lucian's Auction of Lives ; on the Tuesday, 
an Eastern apologue as richly coloured as the tales of 
Scheherazade ; on the Wednesday, a character described 
with the skill of La Bruyere ; on the Thursday, a scene 
from common Hfe, equal to the best chapters in the 10 
Vica}' of Wakefield ; on the Friday, some sly Horatian 
pleasantry on fashionable follies, — on hoops, patches, 
or puppet shows ; and on the Saturday, a religious 
meditation, which will bear a comparison with the finest 
passages in Massillon. 15 

It is dangerous to select where there is so much that 
deserves the highest praise. We will venture, however, 
to say that any person who wishes to form a just notion of 
the extent and variety of Addison's powers, will do well 
to read at one sitting the following papers : the two 20 
Visits to the Abbey, the Visit to the Exchange, the Jour- 
nal of the Retired Citizen, the Vision of Mirza, the 
Transmigrations of Pug the Monkey, and the Death of 
Sir Roger de Coverley. 

The least valuable of Addison's contributions to The 2^ 
Spectator are, in the judgement of our age, his critical 
papers. Yet his critical papers are always luminous, and 
often ingenious. The very worst of them must be re- 
garded as creditable to him, when the character of the 



1 1 8 Essay on Addison 

school in which he had been trained is fairly considered. 
The best of them were much too good for his readers. 
In truth, he was not so far behind our generation as he 
was before his own. No essays in The Spectato?- were 
5 more censured and derided than those in which he raised 
his voice against the contempt with which our fine old 
ballads were regarded, and showed the scoffers that the 
same gold which, burnished and polished, gives lustre 
to the ^neid and the Odes of Horace, is mingled with 

10 the rude dross of Chevy Chace. 

It is not strange that the success of The Spectator 
should have been such as no similar work has ever ob- 
tained. The number of copies daily distributed was at 
first three thousand. It subsequently increased, and had 

15 risen to near four thousand when the stamp tax was im- 
posed. That tax was fatal to a crowd of journals. The 
Spectator, however, stood its ground, doubled its price, 
and, though its circulation fell off, still yielded a large 
revenue both to the state and to the authors. For par- 

20 ticular papers, the demand was immense ; of some, it is 
said, twenty thousand copies were required. But this 
was not all. To have The Spectator served up every 
morning with the bohea and rolls was a luxury for the 
few. The majority were content to wait till essays enough 

25 had appeared to form a volume. Ten thousand copies 
of each volume were immediately taken off, and new 
editions were called for. It must be remembered, that 
the population of England was then hardly a third of 
what it now is. The number of Englishmen who were in 



Essay on Addison 119 

the habit of reading was probably not a sixth of what it 
now is. A shopkeeper or a farmer who found any pleas- 
ure in literature was a rarity. Nay, there was doubtless 
more than one knight of the shire whose country seat 
did not contain ten books, receipt books and books on 5 
farriery included. In these circumstances, the sale of 
The Spectator must be considered as indicating a popu- 
larity quite as great as that of the most successful works 
of Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Dickens in their own time. 

At the close of 171 2 The Spectator ceased to appear. 10 
It was probably felt that the shortfaced gentleman and his 
club had been long enough before the town ; and that it 
was time to withdraw them, and to replace them by a 
new set of characters. In a few weeks the first number 
of The Guardian was pubhshed. But The Guardian 15 
was unfortunate both in its birth and in its death. It 
began in dullness, and disappeared in a tempest of fac- 
tion. The original plan was bad. Addison contributed 
nothing till sixty-six numbers had appeared ; and it was 
then impossible to make The Guardian what The Spec- 20 
tator had been. Nestor Ironside and the Miss Lizards 
were people to whom even he could impart no interest. 
He could only furnish some excellent little essays, both 
serious and comic ; and this he did. 

Why Addison gave no assistance to The Guardiati 25 
during the first two months of its existence is a question 
which has puzzled the editors and biographers, but which 
seems to us to admit of a very easy solution. He was 
then engaged in bringing his Cato on the stage. 



I20 Essay on Addison 

The first four acts of this drama had been lying in 
his desk since his return from Italy. His modest and 
sensitive nature shrank from the risk of a public and 
shameful failure ; and, though all who saw the manuscript 
5 were loud in praise, some thought it possible that an 
audience might become impatient even of very good 
rhetoric, and advised Addison to print the play without 
hazarding a representation. At length, after many fits 
of apprehension, the poet yielded to the urgency of his 

10 political friends, who hoped that the pubhc would dis- 
cover some analogy between the followers of Caesar and 
the Tories, between Sempronius and the apostate Whigs, 
between Cato, struggling to the last for the liberties of 
Rome, and the band of patriots who still stood firm round 

15 Halifax and Wharton. 

Addison gave the play to the managers of Drury Lane 
theatre, without stipulating for any advantage to himself. 
They, therefore, thought themselves bound to spare no 
cost in scenery and dresses. The decorations, it is true, 

20 would not have pleased the skilful eye of Mr. Macready. 
Juba's waistcoat blazed with gold lace; Marcia's hoop 
was worthy of a Duchess on the birthday ; and Cato wore 
a wig worth fifty guineas. The prologue was written by 
Pope, and is undoubtedly a dignified and spirited com- 

25 position. The part of the hero was excellently played 
by Booth. Steele undertook to pack a house. The 
boxes were in a blaze with the stars of the Peers in 
Opposition. The pit was crowded with attentive and 
friendly Hsteners from the Inns of Court and the literary 



Essay on Addison 121 

coffee-houses. Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Governor of the 
Bank of England, was at the head of a powerful body of 
auxiharies from the city, warm men and true Whigs, but 
better known at Jonathan's and Garraway's than in the 
haunts of wits and critics. 5 

These precautions were quite superfluous. The Tories, 
as a body, regarded Addison with no unkind feelings. 
Nor was it for their interest, professing, as they did, pro- 
found reverence for law and prescription, and abhorrence 
both of popular insurrections and of standing armies, to 10 
appropriate to themselves reflections thrown on the great 
military chief and demagogue, who, with the support of 
the legions and of the common people, subverted all the 
ancient institutions of his country. Accordingly, every 
shout that was raised by the members of the Kit Cat was 15 
echoed by the High Churchmen of the October; and 
the curtain at length fell amidst thunders of unanimous 
applause. 

The delight and admiration of the town were described 
by The Guardian in terms which we might attribute to 20 
partiality, were it not that The Examiiief', the organ of 
the ministry, held similar language. The Tories, indeed, 
found much to sneer at in the conduct of their opponents. 
Steele had on this, as on other occasions, shown more 
zeal than taste or judgement. The honest citizens who 25 
marched under the orders of Sir Gibby, as he was face- 
tiously called, probably knew better when to buy and 
when to sell stock than when to clap and when to hiss 
at a play, and incurred some ridicule by making the 



122 Essay on Addison 

hypocritical Sempronius their favourite, and by giving 
to his insincere rants louder plaudits than they bestowed 
on the temperate eloquence of Cato. Wharton, too, who 
had the incredible effrontery to applaud the lines about 
5 flying from prosperous vice and from the power of impi- 
ous men to a private station, did not escape the sarcasms 
of those who justly thought that he could fly from noth- 
ing more vicious or impious than himself. The epilogue, 
which was written by Garth, a zealous Whig, was severely 

10 and not unreasonably censured as ignoble and out of 
place. But Addison was described, even by the bitterest 
Tory writers, as a gentleman of wit and virtue, in whose 
friendship many persons of both parties were happy, and 
whose name ought not to be mixed up with factious 

15 squabbles. 

Of the jests by which the triumph of the Whig party 
was disturbed, the most severe and happy was Boling- 
broke's. Between two acts he sent for Booth to his box, 
and presented him, before the whole theatre, with a purse 

20 of fifty guineas for defending the cause of liberty so well 
against a perpetual Dictator. This was a pungent allu- 
sion to the attempt which Marlborough had made, not 
long before his fall, to obtain a patent creating him Cap- 
tain General for life. 

25 It was April ; and in April, a hundred and thirty years 
ago, the London season was thought to be far advanced. 
During a whole month, however, Cato was performed to 
overflowing houses, and brought into the treasury of 
the theatre twice the gains of an ordinary spring. In 



Essay on Addison 123 

the summer, the Dmry Lane company went down to the 
Act at Oxford, and there, before an audience which 
retained an affectionate remembrance of Addison's ac- 
complishments and virtues, his tragedy was acted during 
several days. The gownsmen began to besiege the theatre 5 
in the forenoon, and by one in the afternoon all the seats 
were filled. 

About the merits of the piece which had so extraor- 
dinary an effect, the public, we suppose, has made up its 
mind. To compare it with the masterpieces of the 10 
Attic stage, with the great English dramas of the time of 
Elizabeth, or even with the productions of Schiller's man- 
hood, would be absurd indeed. Yet it contains excellent 
dialogue and declamation, and, among plays fashioned 
on the French model, must be allowed to rank high ; not 15 
indeed with Aihalie or Saul, but, we think, not below 
Cinna, and certainly above any other English tragedy 
of the same school, above many of the plays of Corneille, 
above many of the plays of Voltaire and Alfieri, and above 
some plays of Racine. Be this as it may, we have little 20 
doubt that Cato did as much as the Tatlers, Spectators, 
and Freeholders united, to raise Addison's fame among 
his contemporaries. 

The modesty and good nature of the successful drama- 
tist had tamed even the malignity of faction. But Ht- 25 
erary envy, it should seem, is a fiercer passion than party 
spirit. It was by a zealous Whig that the fiercest attack 
on the Whig tragedy was made. John Dennis published 
Remaj'ks on Cato, which were written with some acute- 



124 Essay on Addison 

ness and with much coarseness and asperity. Addison 
neither defended himself nor retahated. On many points 
he had an excellent defence, and nothing would have 
been easier than to retaliate ; for Dennis had written bad 

5 odes, bad tragedies, bad comedies : he had, moreover, a 
larger share than most men of those infirmities and eccen- 
tricities which excite laughter ; and Addison's power of 
turning either an absurd book or an absurd man into ridi- 
cule was unrivalled. Addison, however, serenely conscious 

loof his superiority, looked with pity on his assailant, whose 
temper, naturally irritable and gloomy, had been soured 
by want, by controversy, and by literary failures. 

But among the young candidates for Addison's favour 
there was one distinguished by talents from the rest, and 

15 distinguished, we fear, not less by malignity and insincer- 
ity. Pope was only twenty-five. But his powers had ex- 
panded to their full maturity; and his best poem, The 
Rape of the Lock, had recently been published. Of his 
genius, Addison had always expressed high admiration. 

20 But Addison had early discerned, what might, indeed, 
have been discerned by an eye less penetrating than his, 
that the diminutive, crooked, sickly boy was eager to re- 
venge himself on society for the unkindness of nature. 
In The Spectator the Essay on Criticism had been praised 

25 with cordial warmth ; but a gentle hint had been added, 
that the writer of so excellent a poem would have done 
well to avoid ill-natured personaHties. Pope, though evi- 
dently more galled by the censure than gratified by the 
praise, returned thanks for the admonition, and promised 



Essay on Addison 125 

to profit by it. The two writers continued to exchange 
civihties, counsel, and small good offices. Addison pub- 
hcly extolled Pope's miscellaneous pieces ; and Pope fur- 
nished Addison with a prologue. This did not last long. 
Pope hated Dennis, whom he had injured without provo- 5 
cation. The appearance of the Remarks on Cato gave 
the irritable poet an opportunity of venting his malice 
under the show of friendship ; and such an opportunity 
could not but be welcome to a nature which was impla- 
cable in enmity, and which always preferred the tortuous 10 
to the straight path. He published, accordingly, the Nar- 
rative of the Frenzy of John Dennis} But Pope had 
mistaken his powers. He was a great master of invective 
and sarcasm ; he could dissect a character in terse and 
sonorous couplets, brilliant with antithesis ; but of dra- 15 
matic talent he was altogether destitute. If he had written 
a lampoon on Dennis, such as that on Atticus or that on 
Sporus, the old grumbler would have been crushed. But 
Pope writing dialogue resembled — to borrow Horace's 
imagery and his own — a wolf which, instead of biting, 20 
should take to kicking, or a monkey which should try to 
sting. The Narrative is utterly contemptible. Of argu- 
ment there is not even the show ; and the jests are such 
as, if they were introduced into a farce, would call forth 
the hisses of the shilling gallery. Dennis raves about the 25 
drama, and the nurse thinks that he is calling for a dram. 
"There is," he cries, "no peripetia in the tragedy, no 
change of fortune, no change at all." " Pray, good sir, 
1 See Leslie Stephen's Life of Pope. 



126 Essay on Addison 

be not angry," says the old woman ; " I'll fetch change." 
This is not exactly the pleasantry of Addison. 

There can be no doubt that Addison saw through this 
officious zeal, and felt himself deeply aggrieved by it. 
5 So foolish and spiteful a pamphlet could do him no good, 
and, if he were thought to have any hand in it, must do 
him harm. Gifted with incomparable powers of ridicule, 
he had never, even in self-defence, used those powers 
inhumanly or uncourteously ; and he was not disposed to 

10 let others make his fame and his interests a pretext under 
which they might commit outrages from which he had 
himself constantly abstained. He accordingly declared 
that he had no concern in the Narrative, that he disap- 
proved of it, and that if he answered the Reuiarks, he 

15 would answer them like a gentleman ; and he took care 
to communicate this to Dennis. Pope was bitterly mor- 
tified ; and to this transaction we are inclined to ascribe 
the hatred with which he ever after regarded Addison. 
In September, 1713, The Guai-dian ceased to appear, 

20 Steele had gone mad about politics. A general election 
had just taken place : he had been chosen member for 
Stockbridge ; and he fully expected to play a first part 
in Parliament. The immense success of The Tatler and 
Spectator had turned his head. He had been the editor 

25 of both those papers, and was not aware how entirely 
they owed their influence and popularity to the genius 
of his friend. His spirits, always violent, were now ex- 
cited by vanity, ambition, and faction, to such a pitch 
that he every day committed some offence against good 



Essay on Addison 127 

sense and good taste. All the discreet and moderate 
members of his own party regretted and condemned his 
folly. " I am in a thousand troubles," Addison wrote, 
" about poor Dick, and wish that his zeal for the public 
may not be ruinous to himself. But he has sent me 5 
word that he is determined to go on, and that any 
advice I may give him in this particular will have no 
weight with him." 

Steele set up a political paper called The Englishman, 
which, as it was not supported by contributions from 10 
Addison, completely failed. By this work, by some 
other writings of the same kind, and by the airs which 
he gave himself at the first meeting of the new Parlia- 
ment, he made the Tories so angry that they determined 
to expel him. The Whigs stood by him gallantly, but 15 
were unable to save him. The vote of expulsion was 
regarded by all dispassionate men as a tyrannical ex- 
ercise of the power of the majority. But Steele's vio- 
lence and folly, though they by no means justified the 
steps which his enemies took, had completely disgusted 20 
his friends ; nor did he ever regain the place which he 
had held in the public estimation. 

Addison about this time conceived the design of add- 
ing an eighth volume to The Spectator. In June, 17 14, 
the first number of the new series appeared, and during 25 
about six months three papers were published weekly. 
Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between 
The Englishman and the eighth volume of The Spectator, 
between Steele without Addison and Addison without 



128 Essay on Addison 

Steele. The Englishman is forgotten; the eighth vol- 
ume of The Spectator contains, perhaps, the finest essays, 
both serious and playful, in the English language. 

Before this volume was completed, the death of Anne ^ 

5 produced an entire change in the administration of public 
affairs. The blow fell suddenly. It found the Tory 
party distracted by internal feuds, and unprepared for 
any great effort. Harley had just been disgraced. Bo- 
lingbroke, it was supposed, would be the chief minister. 

10 But the Queen was on her death bed before the white 
staffs had been given, and her last public act was to de- 
liver it with a feeble hand to the Duke of Shrewsbury. 
The emergency produced a coahtion between all sections 
of pubhc men who were attached to the Protestant succes- 

15 sion. George the First was proclaimed without opposi- 
tion. A Council, in which the leading Whigs had seats, 
took the direction of affairs till the new King should 
arrive.^ The first act of the Lords Justices was to ap- 
point Addison their Secretary. 

20 There is an idle tradition that he was directed to pre- 
pare a letter to the King, that he could not satisfy him- 
self as to the style of this composition, and that the Lords 
Justices called in a clerk, who at once did what was 
wanted. It is not strange that a story so flattering to 

25 mediocrity should be popular ; and we are sorry to 
deprive dunces of their consolation. But the truth must 

1 August I, 1 714. 

2 Part of the insignia of the Lord High Treasurer. 
^ September, 17 14. 



Essay on Addison 129 

be told. It was well observed by Sir James Mackintosh, 
whose knowledge of these times was unequalled, that 
Addison never, in any official document, affected wit or 
eloquence and that his dispatches are, without exception, 
remarkable for unpretending simplicity. Everybody who 5 
knows with what ease Addison's finest essays were pro- 
duced, must be convinced that, if well-turned phrases 
had been wanted, he would have had no difficulty in find- 
ing them. We are, however, inclined to beheve, that the 
story is not absolutely without a foundation. It may well 10 
be that Addison did not know, till he had consulted 
experienced clerks who remembered the times when 
William the Third was absent on the Continent, in what 
form a letter from the Council of Regency to the King 
ought to be drawn. We think it very likely that the 15 
ablest statesmen of our time. Lord John Russell, Sir 
Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, for example, would, 
in similar circumstances, be found quite as ignorant. 
Every office has some little mysteries which the dullest 
man may learn with a httle attention, and which the 20 
greatest man cannot possibly know by intuition. One 
paper must be signed by the chief of the department, 
another by his deputy ; to a third the royal sign manual 
is necessary. One communication is to be registered, 
and another is not. One sentence must be in black ink, 25 
and another in red ink. If the ablest Secretary for 
Ireland were moved to the India Board, if the ablest 
President of the India Board were moved to the War 
Office, he would require instruction on points like these ; 

ESSAY ON ADDISON — 9 



130 Essay on Addison 

and we do not doubt that Addison required such in- 
struction when he became, for the first time, Secretary 
to the Lords Justices. 

George the First took possession of his kingdom with- 

5 out opposition. A new ministry was formed, and a new 

Parhament favourable to the Whigs chosen. Sunderland 

was appointed Lord-lieutenant of Ireland ; and Addison 

again went to Dublin as Chief Secretary. 

At Dublin Swift resided; and there was much specu- 

10 lation about the way in which the Dean and the Secretary 
would behave towards each other. The relations which 
existed between these remarkable men form an interest- 
ing and pleasing portion of literary history. They had 
early attached themselves to the same political party and 

15 to the same patrons. While Anne's Whig ministry was 
in power, the visits of Swift to London and the official 
residence of Addison in Ireland had given them oppor- 
tunities of knowing each other. They were the two 
shrewdest observers of their age. But their observations 

20 on each other had led them to favourable conclusions. 
Swift did full justice to the rare powers of conversation 
which were latent under the bashful deportment of Ad- 
dison. Addison, on the other hand, discerned much good 
nature under the severe look and manner of Swift ; and, 

25 indeed, the Swift of 1708 and the Swift of 1738 were 
two very different men. 

But the paths of the two friends diverged widely. 
The Whig statesmen loaded Addison with solid benefits. 
They praised Swift, asked him to dinner, and did nothing 



Essay on Addison 131 

more for him. His profession laid them under a diffi- 
culty. In the state they could not promote him ; and 
they had reason to fear that, by bestowing preferment in 
the church on the author of the Tale of a Tub, they 
might give scandal to the public, which had no high 5 
opinion of their orthodoxy. He did not make fair allow- 
ance for the difficulties which prevented Halifax and 
Somers from serving him, thought himself an ill-used 
man, sacrificed honour and consistency to revenge, joined 
the Tories, and became their most formidable champion. 10 
He soon found, however, that his old friends were less to 
blame than he had supposed. The dislike with which 
the Queen and the heads of the church regarded him 
was insurmountable; and it was with the greatest diffi- 
culty that he obtained an ecclesiastical dignity of no 15 
great value, on condition of fixing his residence in a 
country which he detested. 

Difference of poHtical opinion had produced, not in- 
deed a quarrel, but a coolness between Swift and Ad- 
dison. They at length ceased altogether to see each 20 
other. Yet there was between them a tacit compact 
Hke that between the hereditary guests in the Iliad. 

"''E7xea 5' dWi^Xcoj' oKeiliixeda Kal 8l oifxiXov 
UoWol jxkv yap i/xol TpQes kXcltoi t kirlKovpoi^ 
Kretj'etj', %v /ce ^eos 7e iropri koX Troccrt /ctxe/w, 2' 

IloXXot 5' av aol 'Axct'ot, evalpeixev 6v k€ dijprjai." 

It is not strange that Addison, who calumniated and 
insulted nobody, should not have calumniated or insulted 
Swift. But it is remarkable that Swift, to whom neither 



132 Essay on Addison 

genius nor virtue was sacred, and who generally seemed 
to find, like most other renegades, a peculiar pleasure in 
attacking old friends, should have shown so much respect 
and tenderness to Addison. >>> '^ 
5 Fortune had now changed. The accession of the 
House of Hanover had secured in England the liberties 
of the people, and in Ireland the dominion of the Prot- 
estant caste. To that caste Swift was more odious than 
any other man. He was hooted and even pelted in the 

10 streets of Dublin ; and could not venture to ride along 
the strand for his health without the attendance of armed 
servants. Many whom he had formerly served now 
libelled and insulted him. At this time Addison arrived. 
He had been advised not to show the smallest civility to 

15 the Dean^ of St. Patrick's. He had answered, with ad- 
mirable spirit, that it might be necessary for men whose 
fidelity to their party was suspected, to hold no inter- 
course with political opponents; but that one who had 
been a steady Whig in the worst times might venture, 

20 when the good cause was triumphant, to shake hands 
with an old friend who was one of the vanquished Tories. 
His kindness was soothing to the proud and cruelly 
wounded spirit of Swift ; and the two great satirists re- 
sumed their habits of friendly intercourse. 

25 Those associates of Addison whose political opinions 
agreed with his shared his good fortune. He took Tick- 
ell with him to Ireland. He procured for Budgell a 
lucrative place in the same kingdom. Ambrose Phillipps 
1 Swift. 



Essay on Addison 133 

was provided for in England. Steele had injured him- 
self so much by his eccentricity and perverseness that he 
obtained but a very small part of what he thought his 
due. He was, however, knighted ; he had a place in the 
household ; and he subsequently received other marks of 5 
favour from the court. 

Addison did not remain long in Ireland. In 1715 he 
quitted his secretaryship for a seat at the Board of Trade. 
In the same year his comedy of The Dru77imer was 
brought on the stage. The name of the author was not 10 
announced ; the piece was coldly received ; and some 
critics have expressed a doubt whether it were really Ad- 
dison's. To us the evidence, both external and internal, 
seems decisive. It is not in Addison's best manner ; but 
it contains numerous passages which no other writer 15 
known to us could have produced. It was again per- 
formed after Addison's death, and, being known to be his, 
was loudly applauded. 

Towards the close of the year 1715, while the re- 
bellion was still raging in Scotland, Addison pubhshed2o 
the first number of a paper called The Freeholder. 
Among his political works The Freeholder is entitled to 
the first place. Ev^en in The Spectator there are few seri- 
ous papers nobler than the character of his friend Lord 
Somers, and certainly no satirical papers superior to 25 
those in which the Tory fox-hunter is introduced. This 
character is the original of Squire Western, and is drawn 
with all Fielding's force, and with a delicacy of which 
Fielding was altogether destitute. As none of Addison's 



134 Essay on Addison 

works exhibits stronger marks of his genius than The Free- 
holder^ so none does more honour to his moral character. 
It is difficult to extol too highly the candour and human- 
ity of a political writer whom even the excitement of civil 
5 war cannot hurry into unseemly violence. Oxford, it is 
well known, was then the stronghold of Toryism. The 
High Street had been repeatedly Hned with bayonets in 
order to keep down the disaffected gownsmen ; and trai- 
tors pursued by the messengers of the government had 

10 been concealed in the garrets of several colleges. Yet the 
admonition which, even under such circumstances, Addi- 
son addressed to the University, is singularly gentle, 
respectful, and even affectionate. Indeed, he could not 
find it in his heart to deal harshly even with imaginary 

15 persons. His fox-hunter, though ignorant, stupid, and 
violent, is at heart a good fellow, and is at last reclaimed 
by the clemency of the King. Steele was dissatisfied 
with his friend's moderation, and, though he acknowl- 
edged that The Freeholder was excellently written, com- 

20 plained that the ministry played on a lute when it was 
necessary to blow the trumpet. He accordingly deter- 
mined to execute a flourish after his own fashion, and 
tried to rouse the pubKc spirit of the nation by means of 
a paper called The Town Talk, which is now as utterly 

25 forgotten as his English77ian, as his Crisis, as his Letter 
to the Bailiff of Stockbridge, as his Reader, in short, as 
everything that he wrote without the help of Addison. 

In the same year in which 77ie Drummer was acted, 
and in which the first numbers of The Freeholder ap- 



Essay on Addison 135 

peared^ the estrangement of Pope and Addison became 
complete. Addison had from the first seen that Pope 
was false and malevolent. Pope had discovered that 
Addison was jealous. The discovery was made in a 
strange manner. Pope had written the Rape of the Lock, 5 
in two cantos, without supernatural machinery. These 
two cantos had been loudly applauded, and by none more 
loudly than by Addison. Then Pope thought of the Sylphs 
and Gnomes, Ariel, Momentilla, Crispissa, and Umbial, 
and resolved to interweave the Rosicrucian mythology 10 
with the original fabric. He asked Addison's advice. 
Addison said that the poem as it stood was a delicious 
httle thing, and entreated Pope not to run the risk of 
marring what was so excellent in trying to mend it. 
Pope afterwards declared that this insidious counsel first 15 
opened his eyes to the baseness of him who gave it. 

Now there can be no doubt that Pope's plan was most 
ingenious, and that he afterwards executed it with great 
skill and success. But does it necessarily follow that 
Addison's advice was bad? And if Addison's advice was 20 
bad, does it necessarily follow that it was given from bad 
motives? If a friend were to ask us whether we would 
advise him to risk his all in a lottery of which the chances 
were ten to one against him, we should do our best to 
dissuade him from running such a risk. Even if he were 25 
so lucky as to get the thirty thousand pound prize, we 
should not admit that we had counselled him ill ; and we 
should certainly think it the height of injustice in him to 
accuse us of having been actuated by malice. We think 



136 Essay on Addison 

Addison's advice good advice. It rested on a sound 
principle, the result of long and wide experience. The 
general rule undoubtedly is that, when a successful work 
of imagination has been produced, it should not be recast. 
5 We cannot at this moment call to mind a single instance 
in which this rule has been transgressed with happy effect, 
except the instance of the Rape of the Lock. Tasso 
recast his Jerusalem. Akenside recast his Pleasures of the 
Imagination, and his Epistle to Cui'io. Pope himself, 

to emboldened no doubt by the success with which he had 
expanded and remodelled \k\Q Rape of the Lock, made the 
same experiment on the Dunciad. All these attempts 
failed. Who was to foresee that Pope would, once in 
his life, be able to do what he could not himself do twice, 

15 and what nobody else had ever done ? 

Addison's advice was good. But had it been bad, why 
should we pronounce it dishonest? Scott tells us that 
one of his best friends predicted the failure of Waverley. 
Herder adjured Goethe not to take so unpromising a sub- 

2oject as Faust. Hume tried to dissuade Robertson from 
writing the History of Chai'les the Fifth. Nay, Pope 
himself was one of those who prophesied that Cato would 
never succeed on the stage, and advised Addison to 
print it without risking a representation. But Scott, 

25 Goethe, Robertson, Addison, had the good sense and 
generosity to give their advisers credit for the best inten- 
tions. Pope's heart was not of the same kind with 
theirs. 

In 1 715, while he was engaged in translating the Iliad, 



Essay on Addison 137 

he met Addison at a coffee-house. PhilHpps and Budgell 
were there ; but their sovereign got rid of them, and 
asked Pope to dine with him alone. After dinner Addi- 
son said that he lay under a difficulty which he wished to 
explain. "Tickell," he said, " translated some time ago 5 
the first book of the Iliad. I have promised to look it 
over and correct it. I cannot, therefore, ask to see 
yours ; for that would be double dealing." Pope made 
a civil reply, and begged that his second book might have 
the advantage of Addison's revision. Addison readily 10 
agreed, looked over the second book, and sent it back 
with warm commendations. 

Tickell's version of the first book appeared soon after 
this conversation. In the preface, all rivalry was ear- 
nestly disclaimed. Tickell declared that he should not 15 
go on with the Iliad, That enterprise he should leave to 
powers which he admitted to be superior to his own. 
His only view, he said, in publishing this specimen was 
to bespeak the favour of the public to a translation of the 
Odyssey, in which he had made some progress. 20 

Addison, and Addison's dev^oted followers, pronounced 
both the versions good, but maintained that Tickell's had 
more of the original. The town gave a decided prefer- 
ence to Pope's. We do not think it worth while to 
settle such a question of precedence. Neither of the 25 
rivals can be said to have translated the Iliad, unless in- 
deed, the word translation be used in the sense which it 
bears in the Midsummer Nighfs Df'ea77t. When Bottom 
makes his appearance with an ass's head instead of his 



138 Essay on Addison 

own, Peter Quince exclaims, " Bless thee ! Bottom, bless 
thee ! thou art translated." In this sense, undoubtedly, 
the readers of either Pope or Tickell may very properly 
exclaim, " Bless thee ! Homer ; thou art translated 
5 indeed." 

Our readers will, we hope, agree with us in thinking 
that no man in Addison's situation could have acted 
more fairly and kindly, both towards Pope, and towards 
Tickell, than he appears to have done. But an odious 

10 suspicion had sprung up in the mind of Pope. He 
fancied, and he soon firmly believed, that there was a 
deep conspiracy against his fame and his fortunes. The 
work on which he had staked his reputation was to be 
depreciated. The subscription, on which rested his 

15 hopes of a competence, was to be defeated. With this 
view Addison had made a rival translation : Tickell had 
consented to father it ; and the wits of Button's had 
united to puff it. 

Is there any external evidence to support this grave 

20 accusation ? The answer is short. There is absolutely 
none. 

Was there any internal evidence which proved Addi- 
son to be the author of this version? Was it a work 
which Tickell was incapable of producing? Surely not. 

25 Tickell was a Fellow of a College at Oxford, and must be 
supposed to have been able to construe the Iliad; and 
he was a better versifier than his friend. We are not 
aware that Pope pretended to have discovered any turns 
of expression peculiar to Addison. Had such turns of 



Essay on Addison 139 

expression been discovered, they would be sufficiently 
accounted for by supposing Addison to have corrected 
his friend's lines, as he owned that he had done. 

Is there anything in the character of the accused 
persons which makes the accusation probable? We an- 5 
swer confidently — nothing. Tickell was long after this 
time described by Pope himself as a very fair and worthy 
man. Addison had been, during many years, before the 
public. Literary rivals, political opponents, had kept 
their eyes on him. But neither envy nor faction, in their 10 
utmost rage, had ever imputed to him a single deviation 
from the laws of honour and of social morahty. Had he 
been indeed a man meanly jealous of fame, and capable 
of stooping to base and wicked acts for the purpose of 
injuring his competitors, would his vices have remained 15 
latent so long? He was a writer of tragedy: had he 
ever injured Rowe? He was a writer of comedy: had 
he not done ample justice to Congreve, and given valu- 
able help to Steele? He was a pamphleteer: have not 
his good nature and generosity been acknowledged by 20 
Swift, his rival in fame and his adversary in politics? 

That Tickell should have been guilty of a villainy 
seems to us highly improbable. That Addison should 
have been guilty of a villainy seems to us highly improb- 
able. But that these two men should have conspired 25 
together to commit a villainy seems to us improbable in 
a tenfold degree. All that is known to us of their inter- 
course tends to prove that it was not the intercourse 
of two accomplices in crime. These are some of the 



140 Essay on Addison 

lines in which Tickell poured forth his sorrow over the 
coffin of Addison : 

" Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind, 
A task well suited to thy gentle mind ? 
e Oh, if sometimes thy spotless form descend, 

To me thine aid, thou guardian genius, lend. 
"When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms. 
When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms, 
In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart, 
10 And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart; 

Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before, 
Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more." 

In what words, we should like to know, did this guar- 
dian genius invite his pupil to join in a plan such as the 

15 editor of the Satirist would hardly dare to propose to the 
editor of the Age ? 

We do not accuse Pope of bringing an accusation 
which he knew to be false. We have not the smallest 
doubt that he believed it to be true ; and the evidence on 

20 which he believed it he found in his own bad heart. His 
own life was one long series of tricks, as mean and as 
malicious as that of which he suspected Addison and 
Tickell. He was all stiletto and mask. To injure, to in- 
sult, and to save himself from the consequences of injury 

25 and insult by lying and equivocating, was the habit of his 
life. He published a lampoon on the Duke of Chandos ; 
he was taxed with it ; and he lied and equivocated. He 
published a lampoon on Aaron Hill ; he was taxed with 
it ; and he lied and equivocated. He published a still 

30 fouler lampoon on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu ; he 



Essay on Addison 141 

was taxed with it ; and he hed with more than usual ef- 
frontery and vehemence. He puffed himself and abused 
his enemies under feigned names. He robbed himself of 
his own letters, and then raised the hue and cry after 
them. Besides his frauds of malignity, of fear, of inter- 5 
est, and of vanity, there were frauds which he seems to 
have committed from love of fraud alone. He had a 
habit of stratagem, a pleasure in outwitting all who came 
near him. Whatever his object might be, the indirect 
road to it was that which he preferred. For Bolingbroke, 10 
Pope undoubtedly felt as much love and veneration as it 
was his nature to feel for any human being. Yet Pope 
was scarcely dead when it was discovered that, from no 
motive except the mere love of artifice, he had been 
guilty of an act of gross perfidy to Bolingbroke. 15 

Nothing was more natural than that such a man as 
this should attribute to others that which he felt within 
himself. A plain, probable, coherent explanation is 
frankly given to him. He is certain that it is all a 
romance. A line of conduct scrupulously fair, and even 20 
friendly, is pursued towards him. He is convinced that 
it is merely a cover for a vile intrigue by which he is to be 
disgraced and ruined. It is vain to ask him for proofs. 
He has none, and wants none, except those which he 
carries in his own bosom. 25 

Whether Pope's malignity at length provoked Addison 
to retaliate for the first and last time, cannot now be 
known with certainty. We have only Pope's story,^ which 
1 See Courthope's Life of Addison. 



142 Essay on Addison 

runs thus. A pamphlet appeared containing some reflec- 
tions which stung Pope to the quick. What those reflec- 
tions were, and whether they were reflections of which he 
had a right to complain, we have now no means of de- 
5 ciding. The Earl of Warwick, a foolish and vicious lad, 
who regarded Addison with the feelings with which such 
lads generally regard their best friends, told Pope, truly or 
falsely, that this pamphlet had been written by Addison's 
direction. When we consider what a tendency stories 

10 have to grow, in passing even from one honest man to 
another honest man, and, when we consider that to the 
name of honest man neither Pope nor the Earl of War- 
wick had a claim, we are not disposed to attach much 
importance to this anecdote. 

15 It is certain, however, that Pope was furious. He had 
already sketched the character of Atticus in prose. In his 
anger he turned this prose into the briUiant and energetic 
lines which everybody knows by heart, or ought to know 
by heart, and sent them to Addison. One charge which 

20 Pope has enforced with great skill is probably not without 
foundation. Addison was, we are inclined to believe, too 
fond of presiding over a circle of humble friends. Of the 
other imputations which these famous Hnes are intended to 
convey, scarcely one has ever been proved to be just, and 

25 some are certainly false. That Addison was not in the habit 
of " damning with faint praise " appears from innumerable 
passages in his writings, and from none more than from 
those in which he mentions Pope. And it is not merely 
unjust, but ridiculous, to describe a man who made the 



Essay on Addison 143 

fortune of almost every one of his intimate friends, as 
" so obliging that he ne'er obliged." 

That Addison felt the sting of Pope's satire keenly, we 
cannot doubt. That he was conscious of one of the 
weaknesses with which he was reproached, is highly prob- 5 
able. But his heart, we firmly beUeve, acquitted him of 
the gravest part of the accusation. He acted like him- 
self. As a satirist he was, at his own weapons, more 
than Pope's match ; and he would have been at no loss 
for topics. A distorted and diseased body, tenanted by 10 
a yet more distorted and diseased mind ; spite and envy 
thinly disguised by sentiments as benevolent and noble as 
those which Sir Peter Teazle admired in Mr. Joseph Sur- 
face ; a feeble, sickly licentiousness ; an odious love of 
filthy and noisome images; these were things which a 15 
genius less powerful than that to which we owe The Spec- 
tator could easily have held up to the mirth and hatred 
of mankind. Addison had, moreover, at his command, 
other means of vengeance which a bad man would not 
have scrupled to use. He was powerful in the state. 20 
Pope was a Catholic ; and, in those times, a minister 
would have found it easy to harass the most innocent 
Catholic by innumerable petty vexations. Pope, near 
twenty years later, said that " through the lenity of the 
government alone he could live with comfort." " Con- 25 
sider," he exclaimed, " the injury that a man of high rank 
and credit may do to a private person, under penal laws 
and many other disadvantages." It is pleasing ro reflect 
that the only revenge which Addison took was to insert 



144 Essay on Addison 

in The Freeholder a warm encomium on the translation 
of the Iliad, and to exhort all lovers of learning to put 
down their names as subscribers. There could be no 
doubt, he said, from the specimens already published, 
5 that the masterly hand of Pope would do as much for 
Homer as Dryden had done for Virgil. From that time 
to the end of his life, he always treated Pope, by Pope's 
own acknowledgment, with justice. Friendship was, of 
course, at an end. 

lo One reason which induced the Earl of Warwick to play 
the ignominious part of talebearer on this occasion, may 
have been his dislike of the marriage which was about 
to take place between his mother and Addison. The 
Countess Dowager, a daughter of the old and honourable 

15 family of the Myddletons of Chirk, a family which, in any 
country but ours, would be called noble, resided at Hol- 
land House. Addison had, during some years, occupied 
at Chelsea a small dvveUing, once the abode of Nell 
Gwynn. Chelsea is now a district of London, and Hol- 

20 land House may be called a town residence. But, in the 
days of Anne and George the First, milkmaids and sports- 
men wandered between green hedges and over fields 
bright with daisies, from Kensington almost to the shore 
of the Thames. Addison and Lady Warwick were 

25 country neighbours, and became intimate friends. The 
great wit and scholar tried to allure the young Lord from 
the fashionable amusements of beating watchmen, break- 
ing windows, and rolling women in hogsheads down 
Holborn Hill, to the study of letters and the practice of 



Essay on Addison 145 

virtue. These well meant exertions did little good, how- 
ever, either to the disciple or to the master. Lord VVar- 
v*^ick grew up a rake ; and Addison fell in love. The 
mature beauty of the Countess has been celebrated by 
poets in language which, after a very large allowance has 5 
been made for flattery, would lead us to believe that she 
was a fine woman ; and her rank doubtless heightened 
her attractions. The courtship was long. The hopes of 
the lover appear to have risen and fallen with the fortunes 
of his party. His attachment was at length matter of such 10 
notoriety that, when he visited Ireland for the last time, 
Rowe addressed some consolatory verses to the Chloe of 
Holland House. It strikes us as a little strange that, in 
these verses, Addison should be called Lycidas, a name 
of singularly evil omen for a swain just about to cross 15 
St. George's Channel. 

At length Chloe capitulated. Addison was indeed able 
to treat with her on equal terms. He had reason to 
expect preferment even higher than that which he had 
attained. He had inherited the fortune of a brother who 20 
died Governor of Madras. He had purchased an estate 
in Warwickshire, and had been welcomed to his domain 
in very tolerable verse by one of the neighbouring squires, 
the poetical fox-hunter, William Somervile. In August, 
1 7 16, the newspapers announced that Joseph Addison, 25 
Esquire, famous for many excellent works, both in verse 
and prose, had espoused the Countess Dowager of War- 
wick. 

He now fixed his abode at Holland House, a house 

ESSAY ON ADDISON — lO 



146 Essay on Addison 

which can boast of a greater number of inmates distin- 
guished in political and literary history than any other 
private dwelling in England. His portrait still hangs 
there. The features are pleasing ; the complexion is re- 
5 markably fair ; but, in the expression, we trace rather the 
gentleness of his disposition than the force and keenness 
of his intellect. 

Not long after his marriage he reached the height of 
civil greatness. The Whig government had, during some 

10 time, been torn by internal dissensions. Lord Town- 
shend led one section of the Cabinet, Lord Sunderland 
the other. At length, in the spring of 171 7, Sunderland 
triumphed. Townshend retired from office, and was ac- 
companied by Walpole and Cowper. Sunderland pro- 

15 ceeded to reconstruct the ministry ; and Addison was 
appointed Secretary of State. It is certain that the Seals 
were pressed upon him, and were at first decHned by him. 
Men equally versed in official business might easily have 
been found ; and his colleagues knew that they could 

20 not expect assistance from him in debate. He owed his 
elevation to his popularity, to his stainless probity, and to 
his Hterary fame. 

But scarcely had Addison entered the Cabinet when 
his health began to fail. From one serious attack he re- 

25 covered in the autumn ; and his recovery was celebrated 
in Latin verses, worthy of his own pen, by Vincent 
Bourne, who was then at Trinity College, Cambridge. 
A relapse soon took place ; and, in the following spring, 
Addison was prevented by a severe asthma from discharg- 



Essay on Addison 147 

ing the duties of his post. He resigned it, and was suc- 
ceeded by his friend Craggs, a young man whose natural 
parts, though little improved by cultivation, were quick 
and showy, whose graceful person and winning manners 
had made him generally acceptable in society, and who, 5 
if he had lived, would probably have been the most for- 
midable of all the rivals of Walpole. 

As yet there was no Joseph Hume. The ministers, 
therefore, were able to bestow on Addison a retiring 
pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year. In what 10 
form this pension was given we are not told by the 
biographers, and have not time to inquire. But it is 
certain that Addison did not vacate his seat in the 
House of Commons. 

Rest of mind and body seemed to have re-estab- 15 
lished his health ; and he thanked God, with cheerful 
piety, for having set him free both from his office and 
from his asthma. Many years seemed to be before him, 
and he meditated many works, a tragedy on the death of 
Socrates, a translation of the Psalms, a treatise on the 2c 
evidences of Christianity. Of this last performance, a 
part, which we could well spare, has come down to us. 

But the fatal complaint soon returned, and gradu- 
ally prevailed against all the resources of medicine. 
It is melancholy to think that the last months of such 25 
a life should have been overclouded both by domestic 
and by political vexations. A tradition which began 
early, which has been generally received, and to which 
we have nothing to oppose, has represented his wife 



148 Essay on Addison 

as an arrogant and imperious woman. It is said that, 
till his health failed him, he was glad to escape from 
the Countess Dowager and her magnificent dining-room, 
blazing with the gilded devices of the House of Rich, 
5 to some tavern where he could enjoy a laugh, a talk 
about Virgil and Boileau, and a bottle of claret, with 
the friends of his happier days. All those friends, how- 
ever, were not left to him. Sir Richard Steele had 
been gradually estranged by various causes. He con- 

10 sidered himself as one who, in evil times, had braved 
martyrdom for his poHtical principles, and demanded, 
when the Whig party was triumphant, a large compen- 
sation for what he had suffered when it was militant. 
The Whig leaders took a very different view of his 

15 claims. They thought that he had, by his own petu- 
lance and folly, brought them as well as himself into 
trouble, and though they did not absolutely neglect him, 
doled out favours to him with a sparing hand. It was 
natural that he should be angry with them, and espe- 

20 cially angry with Addison. But what above all seems 
to have disturbed Sir Richard, was the elevation of 
Tickell, who, at thirty, was made by Addison Under- 
Secretary of State ; while the editor of The Tatler and 
Spectator^ the author of The C7'isis, the member for 

25 Stockbridge who had been persecuted for firm adher- 
ence to the House of Hanover, was, at near fifty, forced, 
after many solicitations and complaints, to content him- 
self with a share in the patent of Drury Lane theatre. 
Steele himself says, in his celebrated letter to Congreve, 



Essay on Addison 149 

that Addison, by his preference of Tickell, "incurred 
the warmest resentment of other gentlemen " ; and every- 
thing seems to indicate that, of those resentful gentle- 
men, Steele was himself one. 

While poor Sir Richard was brooding over what he 5 
considered as Addison's unkindness, a new cause of 
quarrel arose. The Whig party, already divided against 
itself, was rent by a new schism. The celebrated Bill 
for limiting the number of peers had been brought in. 
The proud Duke of Somicrset, first in rank of all the 10 
nobles whose religion permitted them to sit in Parliament, 
was the ostensible author of the measure. But it was 
supported, and, in truth, devised, by the Prime Minister. 

We are satisfied that the Bill was most pernicious ; 
and we fear that the motives which induced Sunderland 15 
to frame it were not honourable to him. But we cannot 
deny that it was supported by many of the best and wis- 
est men of that age. Nor was this strange. The royal 
prerogative had, within the memory of the generation 
then in the vigour of life, been so grossly abused, that it 20 
was still regarded with a jealousy which, when the pecul- 
iar situation of the House of Brunswick is considered, 
may perhaps be called immoderate. The particular pre- 
rogative of creating peers had, in the opinion of the 
Whigs, been grossly abused by Queen Anne's last minis- 25 
try ; and even the Tories admitted that her Majesty in 
swamping, as it has since been called, the Upper House, 
had done what only an extreme case could justify. The 
theory of the English constitution, according to many 



150 Essay on Addison 

high authorities, was that three independent powers, the 
sovereign, the nobihty, and the commons, ought con- 
stantly to act as checks on each other. If this theory 
were sound, it seemed to follow that to put one of these 

5 powers under the absolute control of the other two, was 
absurd. But if the number of peers were unlimited, it 
could not well be denied that the Upper House was un- 
der the absolute control of the crown and the Commons, 
and was indebted only to their moderation for any power 

10 which it might be suffered to retain. 

Steele took part with the Opposition, Addison with the 
ministers. Steele, in a paper called The Plebeian, vehe- 
mently attacked the Bill. Sunderland called for help on 
Addison, and Addison obeyed the call. In a paper 

15 called The Old Whig, he answered, and indeed refuted, 
Steele's arguments. It seems to us that the premises 
of both the controversialists were unsound ; that, on 
those premises, Addison reasoned well and Steele ill ; 
and that consequently Addison brought out a false con- 

20 elusion, while Steele blundered upon the truth. In style, 
in wit, and in politeness, Addison maintained his supe- 
riority, though The Ohi Whig is by no means one of his 
happiest performances. 

At first, both the anonymous opponents observed the 

25 laws of propriety. But at length Steele so far forgot him- 
self as to throw an odious imputation on the morals of 
the chiefs of the administration. Addison replied with 
severity, but, in our opinion, with less severity than 
was due to so grave an offence against morality and 



Essay on Addison 151 

decorum ; nor did he, in his just anger, forget for a 
moment the laws of good taste and good breeding. One 
calumny which has been often repeated, and never yet 
contradicted, it is our duty to expose. It is asserted 
in the Biographia Britaiuiica, that Addison designated 5 
Steele as "little Dicky." This assertion was repeated 
by Johnson, who had never seen The Old Whig, and was 
therefore excusable. It has also been repeated by Miss 
Aikin, who has seen The Old Whig, and for whom there- 
fore there is less excuse. Now, it is true that the words 10 
'"'little Dicky" occur in The Old Whig, and that Steele's 
name was Richard. It is equally true that the words 
" little Isaac " occur in the Duenna, and that Newton's 
name was Isaac. But we confidently affirm that Addi- 
son's little Dicky had no more to do with Steele than 15 
Sheridan's little Isaac with Newton. If we apply the 
words "Httle Dicky" to Steele, we deprive a very lively 
and ingenious passage, not only of all its wit, but of all 
its meaning. "Little Dicky" was the nickname of Henry 
Norris, an actor of remarkably small stature, but of great 20 
humour, who played the usurer Gomez, then a most popu- 
lar part, in Dryden's Spanish Friar. 

The merited reproof which Steele had received, though 
softened by some kind and courteous expressions, galled 
him bitterly. He replied with little force and great ac- 25 
rimony; but no rejoinder appeared. Addison was fast 
hastening to his grave ; and had, we may well suppose, 
Httle disposition to prosecute a quarrel with an old friend. 
His complaint had terminated in dropsy. He bore up 



152 Essay on Addison 

long and manfully. But at length he abandoned all hope, 
dismissed his physicians, and calmly prepared himself to 
die. 

His works he entrusted to the care of Tickell, and dedi- 
5 cated them a very few days before his death to Craggs, 
in a letter written with the sweet and graceful eloquence 
of a Saturday's Spectatoj-. In this, his last composition, 
he alluded to his approaching end in words so manly, so 
cheerful, and so tender, that it is difficult to read them 

10 without tears. At the same time he earnestly recom- 
mended the interests of Tickell to the care of Craggs. 

Within a few hours of the time at which this dedication 
was written, Addison sent to beg Gay, who was then liv- 
ing by his wits about town, to come to Holland House. 

15 Gay went, and was received with great kindness. To his 
amazement his forgiveness was implored by the dying 
man. Poor Gay, the most good-natured and simple of 
mankind, could not imagine what he had to forgive. 
There was, however, some wrong, the remembrance of 

20 which weighed on Addison's mind, and which he declared 
himself anxious to repair. He was in a state of extreme 
exhaustion ; and the parting was doubtless a friendly one 
on both sides. Gay supposed that some plan to serve 
him had been in agitation at Court, and had been frus- 

25 trated by Addison's influence. Nor is this improbable. 
Gay had paid assiduous court to the royal family. But 
in the Queen's days he had been the eulogist of BoHng- 
broke, and was still connected with many Tories. It is 
not strange that Addison, while heated by conflict, should 



Essay on Addison 153 

have thought himself justified in obstructing the prefer- 
ment of one whom he might regard as a political enemy. 
Neither is it strange that, when reviewing his whole life, 
and earnestly scrutinizing all his motives, he should think 
that he had acted an unkind and ungenerous part, in 5 
using his power against a distressed man of letters, who 
was as harmless and as helpless as a child. 

One inference may be drawn from this anecdote. It 
appears that Addison, on his death-bed, called himself 
to a strict account, and was not at ease till he had asked 10 
pardon for an injury which it was not even suspected that 
he had committed, for an injury which would have caused 
disquiet only to a very tender conscience. Is it not, 
then, reasonable to infer that, if he had really been guilty 
of forming a base conspiracy against the fame and for- 15 
tunes of a rival, he would have expressed some remorse 
for so serious a crime? But it is unnecessary to multiply 
arguments and evidence for the defence, when there is 
neither argument nor evidence for the accusation. 

The last moments of Addison were perfectly serene. 20 
His interview with his stepson is universally known. 
" See," he said, " how a Christian can die." The piety 
of Addison was, in truth, of a singularly cheerful charac- 
ter. The feeling which predominates in all his devo- 
tional writings is gratitude. God was to him the all-wise 25 
and all-powerful friend who had watched over his cradle 
with more than maternal tenderness ; who had listened 
to his cries before they could form themselves in prayer ; 
who had preserved his youth from the snares of vice ; 



154 Essay on Addison 

who had made his cup run over with worldly blessings; 
who had doubled the value of those blessings by bestow- 
ing a thankful heart to enjoy them, and dear friends to 
partake them ; who had rebuked the waves of the 
5 Ligurian gulf, had purified the autumnal air of the Cam- 
pagna, and had restrained the avalanches of Mont Cenis. 
Of the Psalms, his favourite was that which represents 
the Ruler of all things under the endearing image of a 
shepherd, whose crook guides the flock safe, through 

10 gloomy and desolate glens, to meadows well watered and 
rich with herbage. On that goodness to which he 
ascribed all the happiness of his life, he relied in the 
hour of death with the love which casteth out fear. He 
died on the seventeenth of June, 17 19. He had just 

15 entered on his forty- eighth year. 

His body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and 
was borne thence to the Abbey at dead of night. The 
choir sung a funeral hymn. Bishop Atterbury, one of 
those Tories who had loved and honoured the most ac- 

2ocomplished of the Whigs, met the corpse, and led the 
procession by torchlight, round the shrine of Saint Ed- 
ward and the graves of the Plantagenets, to the Chapel 
of Henry the Seventh. On the north side of that Chapel, 
in the vault of the house of Albemarle, the coffin of 

25 Addison lies next to the coffin of Montagu. Yet a 'few 
months, and the same mourners passed again along the 
same aisle. The same sad anthem was again chanted. 
The same vault was again opened; and the coffin of 
Craggs was placed close to the coffin of Addison. 



Essay on Addison 155 

Many tributes were paid to the memory of Addison ; 
but one alone is now remembered. Tickell bewailed his 
friend in an elegy which would do honour to the greatest 
name in our literature, and which unites the energy and 
magnificence of Dryden to the tenderness and purity of 5 
Cowper. This fine poem was prefixed to a superb edi- 
tion of Addison's works, which was pubhshed, in 1721, by 
subscription. The names of the subscribers proved how 
widely his fame had been spread. That his countrymen 
should be eager to possess his writings, even in a costly 10 
form, is not wonderful. But it is wonderful that, though 
English literature was then little studied on the Continent, 
Spanish grandees, Italian prelates, marshals of France, 
should be found in the list. Among the most remarkable 
names are those of the Queen of Sweden, of Prince 15 
Eugene, of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, of the Dukes of 
Parma, Modena, and Guastalla, of the Doge of Genoa, 
of the Regent Orleans, and of Cardinal Dubois. We 
ought to add that this edition, though eminently beauti- 
ful, is in some important points defective ; nor, indeed, do 20 
we yet possess a complete collection of Addison's writings. 

It is strange that neither his opulent and noble widow, 
nor any of his powerful and attached friends, should have 
thought of placing even a simple tablet, inscribed with 
his name, on the walls of the Abbey. It was not till 25 
three generations had laughed and wept over his pages 
that the omission was supplied by the pubhc veneration. 
At length, in our own time, his image, skilfully graven, 
appeared in Poets' Corner. It represents him, as we can 



156 Essay on Addison 

conceive him, clad in his dressing-gown, and freed from 
his wig, stepping from his parlour at Chelsea into his 
trim little garden, with the account of the Everlasting 
Club, or the Loves of Hilpa and Shalum, just finished for 
5 the next day's Spectator, in his hand. Such a mark of 
national respect was due to the unsuUied statesman, to 
the accomplished scholar, to the master of pure Enghsh 
eloquence, to the consummate painter of life and man- 
ners. It was due, above all, to the great satirist, who 
10 alone knew how to use ridicule without abusing it ; who, 
without inflicting a wound, effected a great social reform ; 
and who reconciled wit and virtue, after a long and disas- 
trous separation, during which wit had been led astray by 
profligacy, and virtue by fanaticism. 



NOTES 

The heavy marginal figures stand for page, and the lighter ones for line. 

39 : 15. Bradamante. The maiden knight, who, disguised in 
man's attire, fought a duel with Rogero. He would not use 
against her his magic sword, Balisarda. See Ariosto's Orlando 
Furioso, xlv. 68. 

39 : 21. Miss Aikin, Lucy (1781-1864). She wrote the Life 
of Addison, and Memoirs of the courts of Elizabeth, James I, and 
Charles I. 

40 : 9. Laputan. Gulliver visited Laputa, a flying island, in- 
habited by a race of philosophers who were so absent-minded that 
attendants were employed to flap their faces with a bladder to 
arouse them from their abstraction. See Swift's Travels of Lemuel 
Gulliver. 

40:23. Raleigh (1552-1618). English courtier, navigator, 
historian, and poet, during reigns of Elizabeth and James I. 

40: 23, Congreve (1670-1729). Dramatist of the age of Queen 
Anne. 

40 : 23. Prior (i 664-1 721). Poet and diplomatist of the reigns 
of William III and Queen Anne. 

40 : 25. Theobald's. Country seat of Lord Burleigh and hunting 
seat of James I, in Hertfordshire, thirteen miles north of London. 

40 : 25. Steenkirks. Large lace neckcloths, artistically disar- 
ranged, worn by the dandies of Queen Anne's reign, so called 
because the French gentlemen rushed into the battle of Steenkirk 
with their cravats in disorder. 

40 : 27. Hampton. A palace on the Thames, fifteen miles 
southwest of London, built by Cardinal Wolsey and presented by 

157 



158 Notes 



him to Henry VIII. It was the royal residence of all the Tudor 
and Stuart sovereigns. 

41: 15. Westminster Abbey. A famous church in London, 
which existed before the end of the eighth century. Most of the 
present structure was completed in the middle of the thirteenth 
century. The British sovereigns, from Edward the Confessor to 
King Edward VII, have been crowned there, and many are buried 
there. Most of the great poets and statesmen of England have 
monuments in the south transept, in and near " Poets' Corner." Of 
the nine chapels surrounding the east end in a semicircle, the most 
interesting and historic are those of Edward the Confessor and of 
Henry VII. The abbey is built in the form of a somewhat irregu- 
lar cross, its length, exclusive of Henry VII's chapel, being 511 
feet. 

41 : 25. Parnell (1679-1717). Minor poet of the age of Queen 
Anne. He assisted Pope in his translation of Homer's works. 

41 : 26. Dr. Blair (i 718-1800). Critic and professor of Rhetoric 
in the University of Edinburgh. 

41 : 27. Dr. Johnson (1709-1784). The greatest literary critic 
and essayist of the eighteenth century. He was also a lexicog- 
rapher and dramatist. The largest and most valuable of Johnson's 
works is his Lives of the Poets, containing the critical and literary 
biographies of English poets from Cowley to Gray. Johnson's 
Dictionary, written in eight years, is a monument of vast enterprise 
and labour. He wrote for such periodicals as The Getitlcmaii's 
Magazine, The Rambler, and The Idler. His tale of Rasselas is 
a romantic satire on human life. It describes how Prince Rasselas 
was confined in "The Happy Valley," in order to avoid all the 
miseries of common life. 

42 : 8. Button's. A coffee-house in Covent Garden, frequented 
by Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift, and other literary men. 

43 : I. Biographia Britannica. A collection of biographical 
sketches of distinguished Britons, published 1 747-1766. 

43 '• 3-4- Commonwealth. The form of government established 



Notes 159 



in England on the death of Charles I, in 1649, which existed 
under Oliver Cromwell and his son Richard, until the abduction of 
the latter in 1659. 

43 : 13. Dunkirk. The northernmost town of France, on the 
strait of Dover, Cromwell secured it by treaty in 1658, and 
Charles II sold it to France in 1662. 

43 : 14. Tangier. Seaport of Morocco, near the west entrance 
of the strait of Gibraltar. The Portuguese ceded it to England in 
1662 as a part of the dowry of Catharine, queen of Charles II. 

43 : 16. Infanta Catharine. Daughter of John II of Portugal, 
wife of Charles II of England. 

44 : 3. Revolution, of 1688. The English invited William, 
Prince of Orange, husband of Mary, elder daughter of James II, 
to cross to England for the protection of their religious liberties. 
William landed November 5, 1688, and James II fled to France. 
The Prince of Orange was crowned William III, in February, 1689. 

44 : 5. Convocation. An ecclesiastical court that dealt with 
church matters. In 1689 it opposed William Ill's plan to include 
in the state church all dissenting Protestant clergymen. 

44 : 6. Tillotson (1630- 1694). Archbishop of Canterbury and 
adviser of William III in church affairs. 

44: II. Charter House. An endowed school for boys and 
hospital for indigent gentlemen, founded in London, in 161 1. 
Among its scholars were Addison, Steele, Blackstone, Wesley, and 
Thackeray. 

45 : 7. See note on 44 : 3. 

45 : 14. Bishops. Seven bishops of the Church of England 
were imprisoned because they petitioned James II to excuse them 
from reading his edict, abrogating the laws against Catholicism, in 
their churches. 

45 : 25. Hough ( 1 651-1743). His election as President of 
Magdalen College in 1687 was declared void by James II, and 
Parker, Bishop of Oxford, a Catholic at heart, was elected in 
Hough's place. 



i6o Notes 

46 : 8. Demies. A demy, or demi, at Magdalen College, Oxford, 
called " scholar " at other colleges, is one who secures a founder's 
benefaction. The demy afterwards succeeds to a fellowship, hence 
he is a half-fellow. 

46 : 12. Cherwell. This favourite walk is to-day called "Addi- 
son's Walk." 

47 : 5. Buchanan (i 506-1 582). Scotch historian and tutor of 
Mary Queen of Scots as well as of her son James VI. 

47 : 25. Metamorphoses. Title of a work by the Latin poet 
Ovid. 

47 : 28. Virgil (B.C. 70-19). Romanpoet,author of the ^;z^2V/, 
and favourite of Augustus. 

47 : 28. Statins (45-96). Roman poet, author of the Thchais. 

47 : 29. Claudian (about 365-408). Roman poet, author of 
epics, lyrics, etc. 

48 : 4. Pentheus. Euripides relates in the BaccJuv that Pentheus, 
while secretly witnessing the orgies of the Bacchanales, was mis- 
taken for a wild beast and torn to pieces by his own mother and 
sister, in their Bacchic rage. 

48 : 5. Ovid (B.C. 43-A.D. 18). Roman poet, his chief work 
being the Metajuorphoses. 

48 : 6. Euripides (b.c. 480-406). Tragic poet of Athens, the 
last of the illustrious trio, the two predecessors being ^schylus and 
Sophocles. Of the many tragedies written by Euripides only nine- 
teen entire pieces are extant. 

48 : 6. Theocritus (b. about B.C. 270). Greek poet, the creator 
of pastoral poetry, and author of many famous idylls. 

48 ; 14. Ausonius (about 310-394). Latin poet and poli- 
tician. 

48:14. Manilius. Latin poet, possibly writing under Augustus. 

48 : 14. Cicero (b.c. 106-43). Roman orator and consul, cele- 
brated for his works written in the purest Latin style. 

48 : 21. Hannibal (b.c. 247-183). Carthaginian general, hero 
of the Second Punic War. 



Notes i6i 

48 : 23. Polybius (B.C. 204-125). Greek historian, author of 
history of Rome from 220-146 B.C. 

48 : 24. Livy (b.c. 59-17). Roman historian, author of a history 
of Rome, in 142 books, from the foundation of the city to 9 B.C. 
Only 35 of these books are extant. 

48 : 24. Silius Italicus (about 25). Roman poet, author of the 
heroic poem Ptmica. 

48 : 25. Rubicon. Small river between Italy and Cisalpine Gaul, 
the crossing of which by Caesar was equivalent to a declaration of 
war against the republic. 

48: 25. Plutarch (first century a.d.). Greek biographer and 
essayist, author of the Pa^'allel Lives and Morals. 

48 : 27. Commentaries. Caesar's account of his campaigns in 
Gaul. 

48 : 27. Atticus. Letters from Cicero to his friend Atticus. 

49 : 2, Lucan (39-65). Roman poet, author of the P/zarj^/m. 
49 : 5. Pindar (about b.c. 522-443). Greek lyric poet, author of 

the famous Epicinia, or triumphal odes. 

49 : 5. Callimachus (d. about 240 b.c). An Alexandrian poet 
and teacher. 

49 : 6. Attic dramatists, ^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. 

49 : 7. Horace (b.c. 65-8). Roman poet, author of the famous 
satires, odes, and epistles. 

49 : 7. Juvenal (about 60-140). Roman poet, author of satires. 

49 : 8. Statins, Ovid. See note on 47 : 28 and 48 : 5. 

49 : 29. Cock-Lane ghost. A ridiculous ghost story of the 
eighteenth century. See Boswell's Life of Johnson, i. 406-408, iii. 
268. 

50 : I. Ireland's Vortigern. Title of a drama which Ireland 
claimed was written by Shakespeare. 

50 : 2. Thundering Legion. A Christian legion of the army of 
Marcus Aurelius. It is related that in a battle against the heathen 
his legion prayed for rain and was saved by a miraculous thunder- 
storm. 

ESSAY ON ADDISON — II 



1 62 Notes 

50 : 2. Tiberius (b.c. 42-A.D. 37). Roman emperor, successor 
of Augustus Caesar. The crucifixion of Christ toolc place during his 
reign. 

50 : 4. Agbarus. Eusebius relates that Agbarus, king of Edessa, 
wrote to Jesus Christ, asking Him to come and heal him of a 
sickness. 

50 : 12. Herodotus (about B.C. 484-424). Greek historian, 
called the father of history. 

50 : 16. Boyle, Charles (1676-1731). He started a scholastic 
controversy with Bentley by his edition of the Epistles of PJialaris. 
See Macaulay's Essay on Sir William Temple. 

50 : 16. Blackmore (1650-1729). Physician, poet, and writer 
on theology and politics. See Johnson's Lives of the Poets. 

50 : 22. Aphorism . . . apophthegm. There is, in truth, little 
difference in the meaning of these words. They both indicate a 
concise statement of an important truth, but an aphorism usually 
refers to speculative principles, ethics, or science, e.g. " Maladies 
are cured by nature, not by remedies," and an apophthegm or 
apothegm to practical matters, e.g. " Heaven helps those that help 
themselves." " An apothegm, in common matters what an apho- 
rism is in higher, is essentially a terse proposition that makes a vivid 
impression on the mind." — Cent. Diet. 

50 : 24. False quantities. The scansion of classical poetry is 
based on the long or short quantity of a vowel or a syllable. 

51 : I. Bentley (1662-1742). Head of Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge. He proved that the Epistles of Phalaris, edited by Boyle, 
were written in 2 a.d., instead of 6 B.C. 

51 : 19-20. Thousands of breakfast-tables. This refers to the 
popularity of The Spectator., Addison's paper. 

51 : 20. Swift (1667-1745). Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, 
celebrated as a churchman, politician, and man of letters. His 
best -known works are his satires. Battle of the Books, Tale of a 
Tub, and Gulliver's Travels. See note on Laputan. 

52 : 3. Jamque acies, etc. These lines appear in Pygmao- 



Notes 163 



machia (p. xxxi). "And now, amid the hosts, advances the chief 
of the Pygmies, who, of colossal stature and stately bearing, towers 
above all the rest even to the height of half an ell." 

52 : 10. Drury Lane. The most celebrated theatre in London. 
It was built in 1663, burned in 1672, and rebuilt in 1674, from 
designs by Sir Christopher Wren. A new structure was built in 
1791, and this was again destroyed by fire in 1809. The present 
playhouse was rebuilt in 181 2. 

52 : 13. Dryden (1631-1700). He was poet laureate of Eng- 
land, and was the greatest poet after Milton. He wrote dramas, 
satires, and lyric, religious, and political poems. His translation of 
Virgil, complimented by Addison, is here alluded to. 

52 : 20. Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax (1661-1715). 
Chancellor of the Exchequer under William III, and Prime Minister 
from the accession of George I until his death in 171 5. He was 
a patron of letters, hence his interest in Addison. 

52 : 21. Chancellor of the Exchequer. A member of the British 
cabinet upon whom devolves the charge of the public income and 
expenditure as the highest finance minister of the government. 

•52 : 22. Whig. Name of a political party originating in Eng- 
land in the seventeenth century, in the reign of Charles I or II, 
when great contests existed respecting the royal prerogatives and 
the rights of the people. The supporters of the king were termed 
Tories, and the advocates of popular rights were called Whigs. 

52 : 22. House of Commons. The lower house of Parhament in 
England, consisting of the representatives of cities, boroughs, and 
counties, chosen by men possessed of the property or qualifications 
required by law. 

53 : 2. Newdigate prize. Offered annually at Oxford for the 
best English poem. 

53 : 3- Seatonian prize. Offered annually at Cambridge for 
the best poem on a sacred subject. 

53 : 14. Pope (1688-1744). The leading poet of the age of 
Queen Anne. Like Dryden, he was a satirist. His chief works 



/ 



164 Notes 

are the Essay on Criticism, The Rape of the Lock, translations of 
the I/iad 3ind Odyssey, the Dunciad, and the Essay on Alan. 

53 : 24. Rochester (1647- 1680). -^ licentious, witty versifier 
and court favourite of Charles II. 

53 : 24. Marvel (1621-1678). A poet, best known for his 
friendship with Milton. He assisted Milton in his Latin secre- 
taryship. 

53 : 24, Oldham (i 653-1 683). Satirical poet, contemporary 
with Dryden. 

53 : 26. Ben Jonson (1573-1637). After Shakespeare, the 
greatest dramatist of the age of Elizabeth and James I. 

53 : 26. Hoole ( 1 727-1 803). He translated into English verse 
Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. 

54 : 4. Mr. Brunei's mill. Brunei invented a machine for 
turning pulley-blocks for ships, and built the first tunnel under the 
Thames. 

54 : 7. Translation, yEneid. See Jonson's The Poetaster, v. i. 

54 : 21. Tasso. '^^^ Jerusalem Delivered, xiv. 58. 

55:6. Duke (1655-1707). Theologian and mediocre poet. , 

55 : 6. Stepney (1663- 1707). Translator of Juvenal's Satires. 
55:6. Granville ( 1 667-1 735). Minor dramatist and poet. 

55 : 6. Walsh ( 1 663-1 709). Minor poet, friend of Dryden and 
Pope. 

56 : II. Dorset (i 637-1 706). Courtier, versifier, and patron of 
letters. 

56 : 14. Rasselas. See note on Dr. Johnson, 41 : 27. 

57 : 6. Somers (i 652-1 716). Lawyer and Whig statesman 
during the reign of Queen Anne. 

57 : 10. The Revolution. See note on 44 : 3. 

57 : 12. Censors. The censorship of the press in England was 
abolished in 1694. 

57 : 28. Men of letters. These were Thiers, Guizot, Chateau- 
briand, Lamartine, Villemain, and others, men active in French 
politics in 1843, when this essay was written. 



Notes 165 



58 : II. Somerset (1660-1748). Whig in politics, opposed to 
James II, and a firm adherent of William III. 

58:11. Shrewsbury (1660-17 1 8). Statesman and scholar. He 
helped to make the Revolution of 1688 successful, and was Lord 
High Treasurer under George I. 

58 : 22. Ryswick. The treaty of peace signed at Ryswick, in 
1697, between France and the allies — Germany, Holland, England, 
and Spain. 

60 : 3. Kit Cat Club. Most celebrated social and political club 
of Whigs, who met at a mutton-pie house kept by Christopher Cat, 
in Shire Lane. Upon admission to the club each member cele- 
brated in verse the lady whom he had chosen for his "toast." 
Addison's "toast," the Countess of Manchester, was praised as 

follows : 

" While haughty Gallia's dames, that spread 
O'er their pale cheeks an artful red, 
Beheld this beauteous stranger there, 
In native charms divinely fair. 
Confusion in their looks they showed, 
And with unborrow'd blushes glowed." 

60 : 6. Versailles. City in France, about ten miles southwest of 
Paris. Here Louis XIV erected the celebrated royal palace, con- 
taining galleries of pictures and statues of French events and per- 
sonages. During the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XVI this 
was the most celebrated court of Europe. 

60 : 7. Louis XIV (1638-17 1 5). King of France, called the 
Great. He was eldest son of Louis XIII and of Anne of Austria. 
The reign of Louis XIV has been styled the Augustan age of 
France, and the court was famous for the great men assembled 
about the king. 

60:12. Racine (1639- 1 699). Greatest French tragic dramatist. 

60 : 14. Dacier. Librarian to Louis XIV. He published a 
translation of Plato's works, in which he sought to derive the doc- 
trines of Athanasius from Plato. 



1 66 Notes 

60 : 14. Athanasian. Name taken from St. Athanasius, a bishop 
of Alexandria (about 296-373). The Athanasian creed is a sum- 
mary of the orthodox faith, opposed to Arianism, which questioned 
the divinity of Christ. 

60 : 28. Spence (1699-1768). Professor of poetry and history 
in Oxford. 

61 : 8. Guardian. A daily paper published by Steele after The 
Spectator. See Nos. loi and 104. 

61 : 17. Malebranche (1638-1715). French philosopher and 
metaphysician. 

61:18. Boileau (1636-1711). French poet and satirist. Pope 
imitated his VArt Poetique in the Essay on Criticisjn. Boileau 
insisted on the cultivation of simplicity, clearness, and, above all, 
good sense in poetry. 

61 : 20. Newton (1642- 1727). Illustrious scientist and mathe- 
matician. 

61 : 20„ Hobbes (1588-1679). Philosopher, author of the Z^z/fa- 
than, a treatise on the origin and sanctions of government. 

61 : 270 The Academy. The French Academy, founded by 
Richelieu, in 1635, ^^ ^^^ official representative and arbiter in all 
questions pertaining to French language, literature, and art. 

62 : 9. Sir Joshua Reynolds (i 723-1 792). The celebrated 
portrait painter, friend of Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith, etc., lived in 
Leicester Square. See Boswell's Life of Johnsoti. 

62 : 10. Mrs. Thrale (1741-1821). A woman of literary tastes 
and a friend of Dr. Johnson. See Boswell's Life of Johnson. 

62 : II. Wieland (1733-1813). German poet and romancer; 
one of the translators of Shakespeare into German. 

62 : 11-12. Lessing (1729-1781). Celebrated German drama- 
tist and critic. His famous Laoco'dn contained his theories of liter- 
ary criticism and art. 

62 : 14. Absalom and Achitophel. Dryden's satire on poli- 
ticians of James II's reign. 

63 : 13-14. Augustan age. The reign of Augustus was the 



Notes 167 



golden age of Roman literature. This name was also given to the 
reign of Louis XIV (see note on 60 : 7). The pseudo-classic writers 
of the eighteenth century called their age Augustan. 

63 : 18. PoUio (B.C. 76-A.D. 4). Roman general, consul, and 
historian of the civil war. He established the tirst public library in 
Rome. 

63 : 21. Frederick the Great (171 2-1 786). Frederick II, eldest 
son of Frederick William I of Prussia, and Sophia, daughter of 
George I of England. He is the hero of the seven years' war, and 
he gained Silesia from Maria Theresa of Austria. He established 
the greatness of modern Prussia, yet he despised the German lan- 
guage and literature. 

64 : I. Erasmus (1465-1536). Dutch scholar and theologian. 
64 : I. Fracastorius (1483-1553). Italian physician and poet. 
64 : 2. Dr. Robertson (1721-1793). Historian, author of 

History of Scotland^ etc. 

64 : 8. Gray (1716-1771). Poet, author of Elegy Written in a 
Country Churchyard, and other poems. 

64 : 9. Vincent Bourne (i 695-1 747). Distinguished scholar 
and writer of Latin verse. 

64 : 12. " Ne croyez pas," etc. " Do not think, however, that I 
wish to find fault with the Latin verses which you have sent me of 
one of your illustrious Academicians. I have found them very 
beautiful, and worthy of Vida and Sannazaro, but not of Horace 
and Virgil." 

64 : 15. Vida (1485-1566). Italian ecclesiastic and writer of 
Latin poetry. 

64 : 15. Sannazaro (1458-1530). ItaHan poet, writer of pas- 
toral poetry and prose. 

64 : 19. Fere Fraguier (1G66-1728). French classical scholar 
and writer of Latin poetry, 

65 : 3- " Quid niimeris," etc. " Why, Muse, dost thou bid me, 
the son of a Sigambrian born far north of the Alps, to stammer 
again in Latin verses ? " 



1 68 Notes 

65 : 7-8. Machinae Gesticulantes, and the Gerano-Pygmaso- 
machia. Titles of two of Addison's Latin poems : Puppet Shows, 
and the Battle of the Pygmies and the Cranes. 

66 : 6-7. States General. The name given to the national 
assembly of both France and Holland. The reference here is to 
Holland. 

66 : 8. House of Bourbon. The royal house in France from 
1589 to 1793, and after its restoration from 181 5 to 1830. 

66 : 22. Ligurian. A district of northern Italy in Roman times, 
now embracing the province of Genoa. 

67 : 7. Savona. City of Italy, on the gulf of Genoa. 

67 : 10. Doge. Title of chief magistrate in the republics of 
Venice and Genoa. 

67 : II. Book of Gold. A book in which the names of the lead- 
ing citizens were recorded. 

67 : 16. Doria. The most celebrated member of the Doria 
family was Andrea Doria (1466-1560), the naval commander. He 
freed Genoa from French rule in 1528, and won the title, "Father 
and Liberator of his Country." 

67 : 22. Carnival. The week before Lent, generally celebrated 
in Roman Catholic countries. 

67 : 28. Cato (B.C. 95-46). Roman statesman ; committed 
suicide when he heard of Julius Caesar's victory at Thapsus. He 
was the hero of Addison's drama. 

68 : 2. Scipio (d. B.C. 46). Roman tribune and consul. His 
army was defeated by Cgesar in 46. 

68 : 20-21. San Marino. A republic in the northeast of Italy, 
the oldest and, next to Monaco, the smallest state in Europe. 

69 : 5. St. Peter's. Church, the basilica of St. Peter, in Rome. 
It was begun in 1450, and consecrated in 1626. It surpasses all 
cathedrals in magnitude and splendour. 

69 : 6. Pantheon. Roman temple, erected B.C. 26. 
69 : 21. Appian way. A paved road connecting Rome with 
southern Italy, built B.C. 312-307. 



Notes 169 



69 : 25. Herculaneum. Ancient Italian city, five miles from 
Naples, destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79. It was a 
place of resort for wealthy Romans. 

69 : 26. Pompeii. See note on 69 : 25. Destroyed by eruption 
of Mt. Vesuvius. It was buried under lava and ashes for nearly 
seventeen centuries. Excavations were begun in 1748 and are 
still being carried on. 

69 : 26. PaBstum. Ancient city of southern Italy, on the gulf of 
Salerno, famous for its ruined temples. 

70 : 3. Salvator Rosa (161 5-1673). Italian painter of land- 
scapes, etc. 

70 : 4. Vico (1668- 1 744). Italian philosopher and historian. 

70 : 8. Posilipo. Ridge southwest of Naples, famous for its 
ancient grotto. 

70 : 9. Capreae. Island in the Mediterranean at the entrance to 
the bay of Naples. 

70 : 14. Philip the Fifth (1683- 1746). First king of Spain of 
the house of Bourbon. By the will of Charles II he inherited the 
throne of Spain. He was driven from his Italian possessions by the 
house of Austria. 

70 : 22. Jacobitism. The principles of the Jacobites or adhe- 
rents of James II and his family. 

70 : 23. Freeholder. Political paper published by Addison for 
seven months of the year 1716. See No. 22. 

71 : I. Misenus. Reputed friend and trumpeter of /Eneas. The 
promontory near Cumse is called Misenum. 

71 : 2. Circe. A mythological Greek sorceress, taken by her 
father to the island of JExz, off the coast of Italy. 

71 : 5. .ffineas. The hero of Virgil's ^-^nezd, a Trojan prince, 
who, after the fall of Troy, escaped to Latium, Italy. His son, 
Ascanius, was the ancestor of Romulus and Remus, reputed founders 
of Rome. 

71 : 22. Shrewsbury. See note on 58 : 11. 

72 : 8 Vatican. The papal palace at Rome, joining the basilica 



170 Notes 

of St. Peter. It became the residence of the popes after their 
return from Avignon, France, in 1377. The museum contains 
valuable pictures, statuary, and books. 

72 : 12. Eugene. Prince Eugene of Savoy (i 663-1 736), one of 
the leading generals in the war of the Spanish Succession. He 
defeated Marshal Catinat, the French general. 

72 : 12-13. Rhaetian Alps. Ancient Latin name for the Alps 
of Tyrol and parts of northern Lombardy. 

72 : 14. Ruler of Savoy. Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy, 
first king of Sardinia. 

72 : 18. Grand Alliance. CoaHtion formed by England, Hol- 
land, Austria, Denmark, and Sweden, against France. Louis XIV's 
grandson had succeeded to the throne of Spain, thus making France 
too strong and disturbing the balance of power. 

72 : 22-24. Road . . . Napoleon. Napoleon built a road over 
Mt. Cenis in 18 10. 

73 : 2-3. Lord Halifax. See note on 52 : 20. 

74 : 7. Death of William the Third. In March, 1702, 

74 : II. Seals. Seals were emblems of ofhce. He was asked 
to resign his secretaryship. 

74 : 13. Privy Council. They were not advisers of the crown, 

74 : 27. United Provinces. In 1579 the seven provinces of the 
Low Countries (now Holland) formed the Union of Utrecht, and 
laid the foundation of the Dutch Republic. 

75 : 17. Godolphin (1645-17 12). Great financier, adherent of 
James II. 

75 : 18. Marlborough (i 650-1 722). John Churchill, Duke of 
Marlborough, the famous general in the war of the Spanish Suc- 
cession, whose great victories over the French at Blenheim, Ra- 
millies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet resulted in the triumph of the 
English forces and led to the Peace of Utrecht. On the accession 
of Queen Anne he was for a time practically the ruler of England. 
But when the Tories were returned to power both Marlborough 
and his son-in-law, Godolphin, were dismissed. 



Notes 171 



75 : 19. Country gentlemen, etc. The Tories were called the 
" country " party. 

76 : 14. Tories. See note on Whig, 52 : 22. 

76 : 22. Mr. Canning (i 770-1 827). A statesman and Tory 
leader. In 1827 he was obliged to seek the aid of the Whigs to 
form a ministry. 

76 : 24-25. Nottingham, Daniel Finch, Earl of Nottingham 
(i 647-1 730). A Tory displaced by the Whigs. 

76 : 25. Jersey, Edward Villiers, Earl of Jersey (1656-1711). 
Also displaced by the Whigs. 

76 : 25. Eldon, John Scott, Earl of Eldon (1751-1838). Tory 
leader and Lord Chancellor of England. 

76 : 26. Westmoreland, John Lane, Earl of Westmoreland 
(i 759-1841). He held the office of Lord Privy Seal. 

76 : 28. Somers (1651-1716). Whig leader and Lord Chan- 
cellor in 1697. 

76 : 28. Halifax. See note on 52 : 20. 

76 : 28. Sunderland, Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland 
( 1 674-1 722). Whig leader and son-in-law of the Duke of Marl- 
borough. 

76 : 29. Cowper ( 1 664-1 723). Statesman and Lord High 
Chancellor in 1 707. 

77 : 12. Imperial throne. The Holy Roman Empire, which 
comprised in general the German-speaking peoples in Central 
Europe. It began with Charles the Great, king of the Franks, 
who was crowned Emperor of the West, 800. The empire degen- 
erated through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and 
Francis II (Francis I of Austria) abdicated as the last emperor in 
1806. 

77 : 13. Act of Settlement. Parhament passed an act by 
which the Hanoverians and not the Stuarts should succeed Queen 
Anne. 

77 : 21. Newmarket. Famous for its race-course and training 
stables. 



172 Notes 

79 : 18. Similitude of the Angel: 

" Calm and serene he drives the furious blast, 
And pleased the Almighty's orders to perform, 
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm." 

— From The Campaign. 

79 : 19. Commissionership. Commissioner of Appeals in the 
Excise, and later Under-Secretary of State. 

80 : 25. Achilles. Hero of Homer's Iliad, who defeated the 
Trojans and slew Hector. 

80 : 28. Troy. Ancient city, called Ilium in the Homeric poems, 
situated in the northwestern part of Asia Minor, at the foot of Mt. 
Ida. Dr. Schliemann, in 1 871-1873, believed that he had discovered 
the ruins of old Ilium, and made famous excavations there. 

80 : 28. Lycia. Ancient country on the southern coast of Asia 
Minor, south of Phrygia. 

80 : 28. Scamander. River of Asia Minor, also called Xanthus. 

81 : 8. Life guardsman Shaw. This was probably Shaw, the 
pugilist, who entered the army and won distinction at Waterloo. 

81 : 9. Wellington (1769-1852). British general, celebrated for 
his defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, 1815. 

81 : 9-10. Bonaparte (1769-1821). Emperor of France, and 
celebrated general. In 1798 he defeated the Mamelukes in the 
battle of the Pyramids. 

81 : II. Mamelukes. Egyptian cavalry corps. Originally a 
body-guard of Turkish slaves, practically rulers of Egypt. 

81 : 11-12. Mourad Bey. Commander of the Mamelukes, who 
fought against Napoleon in his Egyptian campaign of 1798. 

81 : 27. Asdrubal, or Hasdrubal. Brother of Hannibal and hero 
of the Punic War. He slew Nero the consul. 

81 : 29. Fabius. Roman hero of the Second Punic War. He 
defeated Hannibal by decoying his troops into useless marches. In 
these battles Thusis, Butes, Maris, Arses, and the other warriors 
were slain. 



Notes 173 



82 : 10. Boyne. In the Battle of the Boyne (so called from a 
river in Ireland) William III vanquished the adherents of James II, 
and secured the control of Ireland in 1690. 

82 : II. John Philips (i 676-1 708). A minor poet, an imitator 
of Milton. 

83 : 24. Prelate. Richard Kidder, bishop of Bath and 
Wells. 

84 : II. Victor Amadeus (1666-1732). Known as the Duke 
of Savoy; ruler of Sicily after the treaty of Utrecht. Later he be- 
came king of Sardinia. 

84:18. Empress Faustina. There were two Roman empresses 
of this name, both notorious for their profligacy. One was the wife 
of the Emperor Antoninus Pius, the other of his successor, Marcus 
Aurelius. 

85 : 5. Dante (1265-1321). Italian poet, author of the Divine 
Comedy. 

85 : 6. Petrarch (i 304-1 374). ItaHan poet, author of sonnets 
and other poems. 

85 : 6. Boccaccio (13 13-1375). Itahan writer, author of the 
Decameron. 

85 : 6. Boiardo (i 430-1494). Italian poet, author of Orlando 
Injiamorato. 

85 : 6. Berni (1498- 15 35). Italian poet. 

85 : 6. Lorenzo (1449-1492). Ruler of Florence, whom Pope 
Sixtus IV is accused of attempting to assassinate. 

85 : 7. Machiavelli (1469-15 27). Statesman and writer of 
Florence. 

85 : 15. Santa Croce. "The Westminster Abbey of Florence," 

85 : 16. Spectre Huntsman. "The spectre huntsman of 
Onesti's line," described in Boccaccio's Tale, and versified by 
Dryden under the title of Theodore and Honoria. 

85 : 17. Rimini. For the story of Paolo and Francesca da 
Rimini, see Dante's Inferno, Canto v. 

85 : 22. Vicenzio Filicaja (i 642-1 707). A Florentine poet. 



1 74 Notes 



86 : I. Tuscan. The dialect of Tuscany, central division of Italy, 
became the purest Italian language. 

86: II. Rowe (1674-17 1 8). Poet laureate to George I and 
writer of tragedies. 

86 : 15. Doctor Arne (1710-1778). Celebrated English musi- 
cian, best known as the composer of Ktde Britannia. 

86 : 28. The Great Seal. To have the Great Seal was to be 
Lord-Keeper. 

87 : 2-3. Electoral Prince of Hanover. Afterward George I of 
England. 

87 : 12. Harley, Robert, Earl of Oxford (1661-1724). Influen- 
tial statesman during part of Queen Anne's reign. As Lord High 
Treasurer in a Tory ministry he aided in bringing the war of the 
Spanish Succession to a close. In 17 14 Bolingbroke defeated 
Harley and succeeded him. 

87 : 23. Sacheverell (1672-17 13). A Tory clergyman, con- 
victed of libelling the Whig ministry. The excitement caused by 
his trial led to the defeat of the Whigs and the removal of Godol- 
phin from power, in 1710. 

87 : 29. Malmsbury. In northern Wiltshire, his native county. 

88 : 19. Talbot, Russell, and Bentinck. Family names of the 
dukes of Shrewsbury, Bedford, and Portland. 

88 : 21. Chatham. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708-17 78). 
The celebrated English statesman who opposed the coercive measures 
passed by Parliament at the beginning of the American Revolution. 

88 : 22. Fox ( 1 749-1 806). Great Tory orator, rival of the 
younger Pitt, son of Henry Fox, Lord Holland. See Macaulay's 
Essay on Lord Holland. 

88 : 27. Censorship of the press. From the Reformation 
until 1679, all books, journals, dramatic pieces, etc., were in- 
spected, before publication, by a censor, to insure their freedom 
from anything immoral or offensive to the government. 

89 : 6. Conduct of the Allies. A tract written by Jonathan 
Swift, in 171 1, in support of the Tories. 



Notes 175 



89 : 25. Mr. Pitt (1759-1806). The younger Pitt, leader of 
the House of Commons when twenty-three years old. 

89 : 26. Walpole, Sir Robert (1676-1745). Greatest Whig 
statesman; Secretary of War and Navy under Anne; Prime Min- 
ister under George III. He resigned his offices in 1742. 

89 : 26. Pulteney (i 684-1 764). Whig, co-worker with Wal- 
pole, later head of the rebellious Whigs who called themselves 
" The Patriots." 

90 : 3. Grub Street. Milton Street at present, once inhabited 
by needy writers, who did piecework for publishers. 

90 : 7. Craftsman. A periodical edited by Bolingbroke in op- 
position to Walpole and the Whigs. 

90 : 12. St. John, Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751). 
A prominent Tory statesman. With Harley he overthrew Marl- 
borough, and later superseded Harley as Prime Minister. He 
sought to prevent the Hanoverian succession. Through TAe 
Craftsman he opposed Walpole. 

91 : 17. Nemesis. The mythological goddess of retribution or 
vengeance. 

91 : 25-26. Mary Montagu (i 689-1 762). A clever literary 
woman, best known for her letters. She was a cousin of Field- 
ing, the novelist, and a friend of Addison, Pope, and other literary 
people. 

92 : 2. Stella. Poetical name given by Swift to Esther Johnson. 
See Leslie Stephen's Life of Swift. 

92 : 4. Steele (i 671-1729). Schoolmate, co-worker, ardent 
friend, and admirer of Addison. He was a dramatist and essayist. 
He published The Tatler, and contributed to its successors, The Spec- 
tator, The Guardian, and The E?iglishman. He was also manager 
of the Drury Lane Theatre. He is one of the creators of the 
modern essay. 

92 : 7. Terence (b.c. 185-159). Roman dramatist. 

92 : 9. Young (1681-1765). Poet; best known as author of 
Night Thoughts. 



176 Notes 

92 : 25-26. Tatler's criticisms . . . Spectator's dialogue. See 

The Tatler, No. 163, and The Spectator, Nos. 567, 568. 

94 : 20. Boswell (i 740-1 795). Author of the most famous 
biography in the English language, — his Life of Johnson. 

94:20-21. Warburton by Hurd. Bishop Richard Hurd (1720- 
1808) was friend and biographer of Bishop Warburton (1698- 

1779)- 

94:27-28. Eustace Budgell ( 1 686-1 737). A relative and pro- 
tege of Addison. He contributed to The Tatler, The Spectator, 
and The Guardian. He became dissipated, fell into debt, was 
guilty of forgery, and drowned himself. The last words he wrote 
were, " What Cato did, and Addison approved, cannot be wrong." 

95 : 15. Ambrose Phillipps (1671-1749). Dramatist, con- 
tributor to The Guardian and The Freethinker, and friend of 
Addison. 

95 : 20. Thomas Tickell (1686- 1740). Poet and translator of 
the Iliad. It was this translation that caused the quarrel between 
Pope and Addison. 

96 : 23. Savage (1697-1743). Minor poet and dissolute char- 
acter. Friend of Dr. Johnson. See the latter 's Lives of the Poets. 

97 : 5. Fielding's Amelia. One of the celebrated novels of 
Henry Fielding (i 707-1 754). 

97 : 23-24. Bayle's Dictionary. Historical and Critical Dic- 
tionary of the French Language by Pierre Bayle (i 647-1 706). 

98 : 23. Wharton (1640-1714). Prominent W^hig and patron 
of Addison. 

99:17. Gerard Hamilton ( 1 729-1 796). Member of the House 
of Commons, whose first speech remained his most notable effort 
and thus gained for him the nickname " Single-speech Hamil- 
ton." 

100 : 6. Literary project. The Tatler. 

100 : 14. Gazetteer. Authorized news publisher, editor of The 
Gazette, a periodical started in 1665, owned and conducted by the 
government. 



Notes 177 



100 : 24-25. Will's and of the Grecian. Celebrated coffee- 
houses. See McCarthey's The Four Georges, vol. i. 

loi : 15. Bickerstaff. Pseudonym first used by Swift, after- 
ward by Steele. 

loi : 17. Paul Pry. Chief character in a drama written by 
John Poole (i 786-1 879). 

loi : 17. Samuel Pickwick. Leading character in Dickens's 
Pickwick Papers. 

102 : lo-ii. St. George's Channel. The channel between 
Wales and Ireland. 

102 : 22. Temple, Sir William (i 628-1699). Eminent diplo- 
matist and essayist. 

102 : 26. Horace Walpole (j 7 17-1797). Son of Sir Robert 
Walpole, a critic, essayist, and letter-writer of note. 

102 : 27-28. Half German jargon. Here Macaulay probably 
had Carlyle in mind. 

103 : 4. Menander (b.c. 342-291). Athenian dramatist. 

103 : 6. Cowley (1618-1667). Minor poet, once highly es- 
teemed. 

103 : 6, Butler (161 2-1 680). Author of Hudibras, a satire on 
the Puritans. 

103 : 8. Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723). A German artist 
who painted portraits of all the English sovereigns from Charles 
II to George I. 

103 : 21. Clarendon. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon (1608- 
1674). Leading statesman of the Restoration, author of the 
History of the Great Rebellion. 

103 : 26. Cervantes (1547-1616). Spanish writer, author of 
Don Quixote, the first part of which was published in 1605. 

104 : 24. Commination service. The service read on Ash 
Wednesday in the English Church for the " denouncing of God's 
anger and judgements against sinners." 

104:26. Voltaire ( 1 694-1 778). French philosopher and writer, 
author of dramas, histories, essays, and other works. 

ESSAY ON ADDISON — 12 



lyS Notes 

105 : 5. Jack Pudding. An old English expression for a clown, 
a buffoon, a vulgar fellow. 

105 : 14-25. Abbe Coyer to Pansophe. A satirical letter, sup- 
posed to be written by Voltaire, who, however, denied that he had 
written it, and hinted that Abbe Coyer was the author. The letter 
was addressed to Dr. Jean- Jacques Pansophe, probably a satirical 
reference to Rousseau. 

105 : 17. Arbuthnot (i 667-1 735). Physician to Queen Anne, 
writer of satires on social and political subjects, the friend of Pope 
and Swift. 

105 : 22. World, etc. Periodicals of the eighteenth century. 
106:13. Mephistopheles. The devil in Goethe's i^«/^j/. 

106 : 14. Puck. The mischief-doer in Shakespeare's Midsum- 
mer Night'' s Dream, 

106 : 14. Soame Jenyns (i 704-1 787). Essayist and theo- 
logian. 

107 : 8-9. Bettesworth and on Franc de Pompignan. Vic- 
tim of the satire of Swift and Voltaire respectively. 

107 : 19. Jeremy Collier (i 650-1 726). Eminent bishop and 
theologian, attacked the stage for its immorality, which attack 
resulted in a much-needed reform. 

107 : 21. Etherege (1635-1691) and Wycherley (1640-1715). 
Brilliant, but corrupt dramatists of the Restoration. 

107 : 28. Hale (1609- 1 6 76) and Tillotson (1630- 1694). The 
former Lord Chief Justice and the latter Archbishop of Canterbury, 
both noted for uprightness and saintliness of character. 

108 : I. Vanbrugh (1666-1726). Brilliant, but coarse dramatist 
of the Restoration. 

108 : 14. Tom Folio, etc. These "portraits" are to be seen in 
The Tatler. 

108 : 15. Court of Honour, etc. These descriptions may be 
found in The Tatler, No. 220, and the following. 

108 : 22. Smalridge (1663-1719). Bishop of Bristol, an elo- 
quent pulpit orator. 



Notes 179 

109: 22. In 1820. Outbreak of popular feeling caused by the 
trial of Queen Caroline, wife of George IV. 

109 : 22. In 1831. Agitations leading up to the passage of 
the Reform Bill of 1832. 

no : 3. Marli. A village five miles north of Versailles, some- 
times the residence of Louis XIV. 

no : 4. Pretender. Son of James IL, styled James III. 

no : 5. St. James's. This palace, in London, has been a royal 
residence since the time of Henry VIII. " St. James's " has become 
the official name for the " Court of Great Britain." 

no : 13-14. Break his white staff. To resign his office of Lord 
High Treasurer. 

in : 8. United England and Scotland. In 1707. 

111 : 15. Walcheren. The English troops sent to capture Ant- 
werp, in 1809, perished at Walcheren, an island at the mouth of the 
Scheldt. 

111:24. A great lady. The Countess of Warwick. See note 
on 144 : 16. 

112 : 14. Whig corporations. Certain corporations, self-per- 
petuating, were enabled to use their power to control elections. 

114 : 23. Child's. Celebrated coffee-house in St. Paul's Church- 
yard. 

115 : 18. Richardson (1689-1761), Fielding (1707-1754), 
Smollett (1721-1771). The three leading novelists of the eigh- 
teenth century. 

115 : 27. Spring Gardens. Pleasure gardens next to White- 
hall palace. 

115 : 29. Mohawks. A band of lawless young men who went 
about the streets at night committing all sorts of outrages on unpro- 
tected citizens. 

117 : 6. Lucian's. A Greek satirist. In the Auction of Lives, 
Zeus sells by auction the philosophers of rival sects. 

117 : 7-8. Tales of Scheherazade. The queen who was sup- 
posed to relate the tales of the Arabian Nights. 



1 80 Notes 

117 : 9. LaBruydre (1645-1696). A celebrated French moralist. 
117: 15. Massillon (1663-1742). French orator, preacher to 

Louis XV. 

118 : 10. Chevy Chace. An early popular English ballad. 

118 : 15. Stamp tax. A Tory tax of one half-penny on each 
newspaper of a single sheet. It was really an attack upon the 
freedom of the press. 

119 : 4. Knight of the shire. A county member of Parliament 
as distinguished from a borough member. 

119 : 21. Nestor Ironside and Miss Lizards. This was the 
Guardian and his wards, the Lizard family playing the same part 
in The Guardian as fhe Spectator Club in The Spectator and 
Isaac Bickerstaff and Jenny Distaff in The Tatler. 

120 : 20. Macready (1793- 1873). One of the great English 
tragedians, manager of the Drury Lane theatre. 

120:21. Juba (d. B.C. 46). King of Numidia. Caesar defeated 
him and the forces of Pompey in B.C. 46. 

120 : 21. Marcia. Daughter of Cato in Addison's Cato. 

120 : 26. Booth, Barton (1681-1733). The greatest tragedian 
of Addison's day, 

120 : 26. To pack a house. To fill it with friends and sup- 
porters. 

120 : 29. Inns of Court. Colleges in which students of law 
reside and are instructed. The four principal in London are the 
Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, Lincoln's Inn, and Gray's 
Inn. 

121 : 4. Jonathan's and Garraway's. Two coffee-houses fre- 
quented by stock-brokers and merchants. 

121 : 16. October. Club of Tories and High Churchmen, of 
which Dean Swift was a member. 

121 : 26. Sir Gibby. Sir Gilbert Heathcote. 

122 : 9. Garth (1661-1719). A poet and physician, friend of 
Addison. 

122 : 17-18. Bolingbroke. See note on 90 : 12. 



Notes 1 8 1 

123 : 2. Act at Oxford. Corresponding, broadly, to our college 
commencement. At Oxford the Act took place early in July. 

123 : 12-13. Schiller's manhood (1759-1805). The great Ger- 
man dramatist and poet. 

123 : 16. Athalie. Tragedy by Racine (1639-1699), French 
tragic poet. 

123 : 16. Saul. Tragedy by Alfieri (i 749-1803), a great Italian 
dramatist. 

123 : 17. Cinna. Historical tragedy by Corneille, the greatest 
French tragic dramatist. 

123 : 28. John Dennis (165 7- 1734). Mediocre dramatist and 
critic. 

125 : 17. Atticus. Pope's name for Addison. 

125 : 18. Sporus. Pope's name for Lord Hervey. 

125: 27. Peripetia. A Greek word meaning a sudden reversal 
of circumstances on which the plot in a drama hinges; a denoue- 
ment. 

129 : I. Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832). Scotch philoso- 
pher and historian, author of a History of the Revolution of 16S8. 

129 : 14. Council of Regency. A body constituted during a 
king's minority, insanity, or absence from the kingdom. 

129 : 16. Lord John Russell (1792-1878). A famous states- 
man, under whose leadership many important political measures 
were passed, notably the Reform Bill of 1832. 

129: 16-17. Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850). Statesman who op- 
posed the passage of the Reform Bill, and who helped to repeal 
the Corn Laws in 1846. 

129 : 17. Lord Palmerston (1784- 1865). Statesman, twice 
Prime Minister, and distinguished for his guidance of England's 
foreign relations. 

129 : 27. India Board. A board of control over the government 
of the East India Company, established by the crown. 

130 : 25. Swift of 1708, etc. See Life of Swift, in English 
Men of Letters Series. 



1 82 Notes 

131 : 22-26. Hereditary guests. Glaucus the Trojan and Diomed 
the Greek. Diomed addressed Glaucus as follows {Iliad, vi. 226- 
229) : "So let us shun each other's spears, even among the throng; 
Trojans are there in multitudes and famous allies for me to slay, 
whoe'er it be that God vouchsafeth me, and my feet overtake; and 
for thee are there Achaians in multitude, to slay whome'er thou 
canst." — Leaf's translation. 

" Enough of Trojans to this lance shall yield, 
In the full harvest of yon ample field ; 
Enough of Greeks shall dye thy spear with gore ; 
But thou and Diomed be foes no more." 

— Pope's Iliad. 

133 '• 19-20. Rebellion. The Earl of Mar started a Jacobite 
movement in Scotland, in favour of James Stuart, " the Pretender," 
called by his adherents James III. 

133 : 21. Freeholder. Biweekly paper, 1715-1716, in support 
of the House of Hanover. 

133 : 27. Squire Western. A character in Fielding's Tom 
Jones, a typical country gentleman of the old school. 

134:24-26. Town Talk, Englishman, Crisis, Reader. Names 
of periodicals. 

135 : 10. Rosicrucian. In reference to a secret society whose 
members professed to possess magic power. 

136 : 8. Akenside (1721-1770). Poet, author of the Pleasures 
of the Imagination. 

136:19. Herder (i 744-1 803). Theologian, literary critic, friend 
of Goethe. 

136 : 19. Goethe (1749-1832). The greatest poet, dramatist, 

and literary genius that Germany has produced. 

136 : 20. Hume (1711-1776). Historian, writer of a History of 
England. 

136 : 20. Robertson. See note on 64 : 2. 

139 : 17. Rowe. See note on 86 : 11. 



Notes 183 



140:15-16. Satirist, Age. Libellous, partisan papers published 
in London in Macaulay's time. 

140 : 26. Duke of Chandos. A great noble of Addison's time, 
the subject of one of Pope's lampoons. See Moral Essays, No. iv. 
99-172. 

140 : 28. Aaron Hill (i 685-1 750). Minor historian and 
poet. 

143 '• 13-14- Sir Peter Teazle, Mr. Joseph Surface. Two of 
the leading characters in Sheridan's 77^£? School for Scandal. 

144 : 14. Countess Dowager. Widow of the late Earl of War- 
wick. 

144 : 15. Chirk. A town in Denbighshire in North Wales. 

144:16-17. Holland House. A celebrated mansion in Kensing- 
ton which passed to the Holland branch of the Warwick family. It 
took its name from Henry Rich, Earl of Holland, by whose father- 
in-law, Sir W^alter Cope, it was built in 1607. Addison married 
the widow of the sixth Earl of Warwick. See Hare's Walks in 
London. 

144 : 18-19. Nell Gwynn (1650-1687). One of the favourites 
of Charles II, an actress. 

144 : 29. Holborn Hill. A part of modern London, one of the 
central districts, which are St. Giles, Holborn, Strand, and London 
City. 

145 : 14. Lycidas. Title of Milton's elegy in memory of his 
friend Edward King, who was drowned while crossing from Eng- 
land to Ireland. 

145:17. Chloe. A favourite name in eighteenth-century poetry 
for a shepherdess or a love-sick maiden. 

145 : 24. Somervile (1677- 1742). Minor poet, author of The 
Chase. 

146 : lo-ii. Lord Townshend (i 674-1 738). Statesman, first 
Secretary of State under George I. He was succeeded by Addison. 

146 : II. Lord Sunderland (1675-1722). Whig Secretary of 
State under Anne, son-in-law of the Duke of Marlborough. 



1 84 Notes 

147 : 2. Craggs. A friend of Addison and his successor as 
Secretary of State. 

147 : 8. Joseph Hume (1777-1855). Celebrated political re- 
former. 

148 : 4. House of Rich. See note on Holland House, 144 : 16. 

149 : 22. House of Brunswick. The Hanoverian kings were 
descendants from William, Duke of Brunswick-Liineburg. 

149 : 27. Swamping. To create a sufficient number of new 
peers to change the vote of the House of Lords. In 171 1 Queen 
Anne, acting through her Tory ministry, had created twelve new 
peers for the sole purpose of obtaining a Tory majority in the 
Upper House, to adopt a measure favoured by the House of 
Commons. 

151 : 13. Duenna. A comedy by Sheridan. 

152 : 13. Gay (1688-1732). Poet and dramatist, author of the 
Beggar^ s Opera. 

154 : 7. His favourite. Read Addison's versification of it, The 
Spectator^ No. 441. 

154 : 16. Jerusalem Chamber. A room at the southwest side 
of Westminster Abbey, so called, probably, from tapestries or pic- 
tures of the history of Jerusalem with which it was hung. 

154 : 18. Atterbury (1662-1732). Was made bishop of 
Rochester and dean of Westminster in 171 3. Soon after the death 
of Anne, having plotted to restore the Stuarts, he was banished for 
life. 

155 : 6. Cowper (i 731-1800). Poet, author of The Task and 
translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey. 

155: 29. Poets' Corner. See note on 41 : 15. 
156: 3-4. Everlasting Club, etc. The Spectator, Nos. 72, 584, 
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